Singapore children’s online counselling experiences on a live chat portal

ABSTRACT

There was no literature on online counselling with Asian primary school children, and the aim of this exploratory qualitative study was to contribute to the literature by providing information on the online Live Chat counselling experiences of 23 primary school children in Singapore. Eight themes and three sub-themes themes in four categories emerged from the data. The children were motivated to seek help for their problems, and they enjoyed good therapeutic alliances with their counsellors, whom they described as trustworthy and supportive of their emotional and practical needs. They found the online counselling experience helpful because they were able to obtain solutions to their problems. We are able to conclude that online counselling with primary school children has utility in the Singapore context.

KEYWORDS:

• Online counselling
• live chat counselling
• synchronous
• Singapore
• children

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note on contributors

Dr Phey Ling Kit is a lecturer at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she coordinates Practicum for the Master’s of Arts (Applied Psychology) programme for the Psychological Studies Academic Group. She is a practicing counselling psychologist in Singapore, with publications in the areas of counselling interventions, processes and andragogies.

Dr Chua Tee Teo is a lecturer in the Psychological Studies Academic Group of the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She conducts research on the social-emotional well-being and motivation of primary and secondary school students in Singapore.

Ms Meilinda Tan is a recent graduate of the Master’s of Arts (Counselling Psychology) programme of the Psychological Studies Academic Group of the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She completed this study for her dissertation under Dr. Kit’s supervision. She is also a practicing counselling psychologist.

Dr Yuhyun Park is the founder of the DQ Institute, which is an upgraded version of the iZHero.net online platform. Currently the platform is being used by DQ Coalition including the World Economic Forum and others to empower children with digital citizenship skills in over 50 countries.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute of Education Academic Research Fund (NIE AcRF) Project RI 7/13 KPL. Although this study was funded by NIE, NTU, the fourth author, Dr Park, is from the DQ Institute.