awareness of family counseling services

Abstract

The study aimed to reveal the level of awareness of Omani families about family counseling by knowing their attitudes and needs about the governmental services and counseling programs in the Sultanate of Oman. It is a descriptive field study that sample survey approach adopted and the questionnaire as a tool to collect data from a random sample simple in random numbers tables method. The sample is including (200) families, 136 of them from the North Batina governorate and 64 from Muscat Governorate, 49.5% are husbands and 50.5% are wives, mostly young people aged between 25-40 years, are working in the government sector.

The study found that the percentage of family’s awareness about family counseling services is 69%. 30% of these families benefit from the services, while 70% do not benefit from it because of cultural and environmental considerations imposed by the customs and traditions in the villages about the family problems. Consequently, most family prefers to use traditional methods to solve their problems, which indicates a lack of awareness of the importance of services. The percentage of awareness of family’s awareness programs is 46%, but only 33% participate of them are  attending the lectures, and 67% of them do not participate because of their lack of awareness and modesties. This reflects the low level of social awareness of parents in the community study on counseling services with limited benefit.