Although adult career counseling programs are widely available to help diverse adult populations in their career planning, displaced homemakers constitute a unique population that requires distinctive career counseling services (Kerka, 1987; "Overview and Findings," 1985; Stravelli, 2004). In general, displaced homemakers are typically women who have devoted several years of their lives to homemaking and have "lost their primary source of income due to divorce, separation, death or disability of a spouse" (Stravelli, 2004). Many of these women, typically aged between 35 and 64, are unemployed, working part-time, or doing jobs that pay below the minimum wage ("Overview and Findings," 1985). Unlike other adult populations, displaced homemakers' situations are often complicated by the presence of children, the sudden shock of losing their primary source of income and their lack of emotional self-sufficiency (Laabs, 1994; Stravelli, 2004). Based on this description, it is evident that the development of an effective career counseling program should take into account each of the aforementioned concerns of displaced homemakers.
In this paper, Vetter et al.'s (1986) model of an adult career counseling program (in Kerka, 1987) will be integrated with the More Options for Mothers who are Single (M.O.M.S) program provided by the Center for New Directions in Columbus, Ohio to provide an ideal career counseling program for displaced homemakers (Laabs, 1994). Vetter et al.'s (1986) model that consists of the following six sequential steps will be used as a general framework for the development of an effective career counseling program: "a) intake; b) formal assessment; c) exploration and information gathering; d) decision-making; e) planning; and f) transition" (Laabs, 1987, "An Interactive Model for Adult Career Counseling Programs").
During the intake interview, program administrators use this opportunity to acquire basic informatio...