Current and innovative, Orientation to the Counseling Profession provides students with a comprehensive overview of the major tenets of the counseling profession, including advocacy and multicultural counseling, licensure, professional associations, ethical and legal issues, consultation, supervision, outcomes research, and counseling process with diverse applications across the lifespan, settings, and specialties. This first edition text focuses on the new counselor preparation initiatives that expose counselors-in-training to essential current and future practices that are missing from the current texts on the market. While many comparable introductory counseling orientation texts approach the field from a dated perspective and more of a global "helping professions" perspective, Orientation to the Counseling Profession, on the other hand, emphasizes new counselor preparation initiatives including: professional identity that focuses on ACA and its divisions, branches and affiliates as the core entities of the counseling field; advocacy counseling, professional advocacy; accountability in counseling; and knowledge of outcomes research.