Annotated Bibliography: Voluntary Counselling and Testing

Keywords: care/client/clients/clinic/counsellor/counsellors/medical/Nurse/on-
site/supervision/VCT/VCT stakeholders
Abstract: Issues raised around the VCT strategy:
* It is broad, does not address specifics that arise in the VCT sites
* Using existing staff to do HIV counselling is an add on job and has implications for sustaining
counselling services.
* In non-medical sites the issue of non-health care workers not being allowed to perform the test
and yet it is difficult to get a nurse on loan for a non-medical site.
* What is a non-medical site? The Department needs to give clear guidance on site selection
especially non-medical sites.
* There is a discrepancy between the targets of the VCT strategy and the capacity of Provinces to
deliver.
* There is an urgent need to provide support and mentorship / supervision to counsellors in-order
to prevent burn out and increase skills thereby increase quality of service provision.
HIV counselling issues and challenges raised:
* Different type of incentive for lay counsellors
* The marketing strategy to promote and encourage people to come to testing is needed.
* Need for more relevant VCT material
* Getting around the legality of a lay counsellor performing the HIV rapid test
* A need for more statistical gathering in the VCT sites
* How many clients can each counsellor see a day? Need guidance in this area.
* Is there a national body for counsellors?
* How voluntary is the VCT in the medical sites? Are people accessing the sites because they
are already in the clinics? How much self-referral is there?
Notes: 1 copy
Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) business plan: 2002-2005. (2002).
Ref Type: Unpublished Work
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