The Sri Lankan Justice System has about 87 Family Counsellors attached to Courts island-wide, with varying years of experience in the field.

These Government officials serve persons referred to them by the Courts dealing with issues relating to family disputes. (Maintenance, custody, domestic violence and divorce)

Unfortunately, many counsellors have not received adequate opportunities for specialized training in this field during their period of service to appropriately guide and advise their clients.

In order to fulfill this hiatus, the current Secretary to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) together with the CORE Justice Programme facilitated a three day training programme on the 12th -14th of June as a joint initiation for family counsellors. The main objective of the Core Justice programme is to strengthen the effectiveness of core justice institutions and to equip the counsellors affiliated to the Courts with knowledge, skills and techniques related to family counseling which in turn would build their professional capacities and develop their personalities.

Sessions addressed the following topics:

• Counselling skills
• Practical use of counselling approaches and skills
• Principles of Family counselling 
• Mental illness in clients
• Mental and psychological and behavioral  changes caused by substance abuse and in stages of the drug addiction process
• Counselling on Gender Base Violence (GBV) (Introducing concepts of what Human Rights are and discussing stereotypes and behavior towards women prevalent in the local culture.
• Family counselling and relaxation techniques
• Stress and the stress management process through self-reflection
• Self-care for professional and personality development