Editorial

What an exciting first couple of years for counselling research in Australia!

cphJournal has grown from zero to three issues in this short space of time. We were honoured by our Canadian colleagues who contributed many innovative and thoughtful articles in Volume 2 Issue 1 Special Issue on Aging and Spirituality, which comprised part of their conference proceedings that went up for peer review.

On the 5 to 8 July 2006 in Brisbane, the International Association of Counselling co-hosted a large conference with the Australian Counselling Association and several other partners ‘Connecting, Creating, Celebrating,’ which brought practitioners together from across Australia and the world. Much to our regret, the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), who are another significant association in Australia, declined the invitation to co-partner with other associations on the conference. Regardless the event was a great success, and cphJournal invited the delegates to submit their conference proceedings for peer review, resulting in Volume 3 Issue 1.

Nadine Pelling has edited a special issue of CPHjournal on Indigenous issues, Volume 3 Issue 2.

cphJournal is receiving a steady stream of papers for future Issues, and visitors to our website have increased to over 3,500 people per month in only that past six months. We are extremely pleased with these outcomes, and we are so proud to have a fantastic team to support an open-to-the-public format that is free. I really wish to encourage creative and multimedia submissions that include jpg format photographs and other visual media that can be printed into a PDF format. As we grow, future possibilities include inclusion of sound files and video streaming, and we welcome submissions that will encourage our team to explore these developments.

Other areas of possible growth relate to supporting creative approaches to narrative, story, and personal reflective essays that look outside the boxes of traditional ‘research.’ Please consider the in-depth nature of counselling consultations across the wide spectrum of education, health, and professional studies as a cultural landscape worth exploring, deconstructing, and re-inventing.

Additional information

Several of the cphJournal Board Members have been involved in producing the first ever comprehensive counselling text book in Australasia, entitled The Practice of Counselling (2007), with Thomson Publishers, Melbourne. Three of our Executive Editors acted as Editors of the book, and a wide spread of Australian based and affiliated authors contributed chapters to the work. For further information see the Thomson website http://www.thomsonlearning.com.au/higher/humanservices/armstrong/index.asp.