The counsellor takes on a range of roles in a school setting and often works with multiple stakeholders whose interests may differ from one another. While the child has to be considered as the primary client, the school counsellor would need to recognize that allowing for one’s counselling framework to be solely guided by what lies in the best interests of the child is rather simplistic and idealistic. Such a position does not do justice to the interconnectedness of relationships in a school context and can begin to gnaw away at the heart of collaborative relationships that the counsellor would need to establish with teachers and parents. The wise African saying:‘It takes a village to raise a child’is perhaps a more pragmatic and humbling approach of viewing counselling practice in schools. It is but inevitable that in trying to maintain a fair balance between different stakeholders and their points of view, the counsellor is challenged by ethical dilemmas practically on a daily basis.
5.3.1 Privacy
At a very basic level the logistics of practicing in a school itself creates ethical challenges. The presence of a school counsellor on the campus signals greater accessibility for the school community in addressing their concerns. Hence there is sometimes a sense of informality and an ad hoc nature to these meetings either between the counsellor and teacher or between student and counsellor. The com- mon spaces teachers and students share—a corridor, a lunch room, a library, a bench outside a classroom may all be settings where a teacher or student approaches
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the counsellor with,‘‘Do you have a minute? I’m between classes and I really need to talk to you now’’. Issues pertaining to protecting the privacy of the client’s identity are a common ethical challenge. Physical space is at a premium in most schools and trying tofind a quiet, secluded corner that can be suitable for a brief conversation is a task. Students and teachers do tend to get curious about who was seen visiting the counsellor’s office and may sometimes even offer well-meaning but unsolicited advice or concern.
Case 3 mentioned at the beginning of this chapter is a typical example of the fact that it is virtually impossible for the counsellor to ensure privacy in terms of client identity. The counsellor would need to be careful not to enter into a dialogue with a teacher or a student who makes a query about a client. Non-committal and general responses that seek neither to confirm nor deny the question being asked may also be helpful in dealing with this challenge. Class teachers or section heads may need to be informed in advance that a student will be seeing the counsellor if the session has been scheduled during an instructional period. The counsellor is not required to provide an explanation to the teacher as to the reason for the student seeking counselling.
5.3.2 Informed Consent
Students access counselling services directly or through a teacher or parent referral.
Ethical challenges present themselves in either type of referral—a parent may not wish for their child to be seen in counselling, or insist that they can give consent provided they are given a session by session account of counselling, or a child/adolescent may express resentment over the fact that they have to visit the counsellor against their personal wishes. Teachers often perceive that hauling a student to visit the counsellor’s office serves as an extension of disciplinary action initiated for the child. Most school counsellors have been at the receiving end of a hassled teacher’s litany of complaints of poor behaviour about a student with the expectation that the session with the counsellor will get the offending student to see the error of her/his ways and mend them in time for the next class. In a setting and culture that places high value on respecting elders and obeyingfigures of authority, does the child truly have a space to refuse consent for counselling?
Adult clients opting for counselling are required to provide their informed consent for the period of counselling. In working with minors the concept of informed consent is a tricky area with some practitioners arguing that entering into counselling is a contractual relationship and a child’s minor status does not make him or her eligible to provide such consent. The British Psychological Society (BPS 2009), however, in their Code of Ethics and Conduct on the matter of informed consent, states that a counsellor or psychologist should ensure that clients, partic- ularly children and vulnerable adults, are given ample opportunity to understand the nature, purpose, and anticipated consequences of any professional services or research participation, so that they may give informed consent to the extent that their capabilities allow.
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If the parent refuses consent for counselling for their child, the Gillick Principle as mentioned by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (BACP 2006) Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy could be used as a reference point for counsellors in India. This states that,“parental right yields to the child’s right to make his own decisions when he reaches a sufficient understanding and intelligence to be capable of making up his own mind on the matter requiring decision”.
The counsellor would definitely need to interpret this in a developmentally appropriate manner considering not just the chronological age of the child but the maturity level, the cultural and specific context, circumstances of the case and any special considerations if the child has a diagnosed condition such as an attention or learning disorder.
5.3.3 Client Identity
It is necessary for counsellors to remind themselves frequently of who their primary client is—the child in a school context especially at times when they are asked to extend their role to include other members. This has to be balanced with main- taining and nurturing a good working relationship with parents and teachers. Case 2 highlights such an issue where a counsellor may be asked to align with a parent typically when the parents are experiencing long standing marital discord or have initiated divorce proceedings. The counsellor was able to resolve this by reminding the mother that her child and his functioning in school was the focus of interven- tion. While it was recognized that she and her husband were going through their personal differences, there were limitations in a school counsellor’s role and being involved in marital therapy was one such example. The mother was also encour- aged to talk this over with her counsellor and to address ways in which she could share a more open communication with her husband. The need for the counsellor to stay impartial and be perceived as fair to both parents was reiterated. With parents going through custody battles for their children, the school counsellor needs to be vigilant in protecting the child’s identity as the focus of school-based interventions and in responding fairly to both parents.
5.3.4 Confidentiality
The most common dilemmas that school counsellors are challenged by are issues related to confidentiality. Confidentiality is described as “nearly a constant strug- gle” in school counselling (Phillips 2007). The counsellor needs to respect the students’ right to confidentiality and weigh it against what teachers and parents need to know. Under the codes of good ethical practice students do have a right to confidentiality, but this is not absolute or binding and at present there is no clarity in
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India, regarding legal guidelines or laws that address issues of confidentiality vis-à- vis children in a school counselling context. In deliberating over confidentiality issues with students and parents, counsellors should factor in that minors are unable to make decisions on their own behalf and are“a group of individuals with few responsibilities, many restrictions, and a complex legal status that maintains a dependency on adults for privilege and access to resources”(Sanger and Willemsen 1991). Minors are dependent on their parents and carers yet they do also demon- strate a progressive movement towards wanting to assert their independence and individuality. Juggling these competing aspects is a truly challenging aspect of the counsellor’s daily workload.
Students entrust the counsellor with personal information sometimes with the specific request that their parents not be told that they are seeking counselling services. A crucial component of the counselling relationship is trust. Hence if a counsellor were to communicate information about the student to a parent or a teacher without the permission or knowledge of the student then it does violate the students’trust in the counsellor. It could result in the student withholding any further personal information during the counselling sessions and possibly not receive the required support. On the other hand, a parent has the right to be involved if they are aware that their child may be experiencing emotional or psychological concerns.
School counsellors usually let their student clients know during thefirst session that there are limitations to confidentiality; they would need to inform their parents if the counsellor felt there was the possibility of harm or danger either to the student client or to others. Situations where the student has spoken of suicidal ideation may allow for a standard counsellor response protocol, however the dilemmas and pondering over possible ethically correct responses occur when the student reveals information about instances such as possession and use of illegal substances and alcohol either by them, their siblings or friends, a possible pregnancy, psychiatric illness in a parent and subsequent child neglect, reporting of an unsound educa- tional practice such as unfair assessment concerns or subject competence about a particular colleague.
Case 1 vignette demonstrated the nested nature of the student’s concerns, her rising anxiety levels veering on depression in coping with a harsh teacher sand- wiched by her decision not to confide in her parents and the assumed possibility that involving the teacher would result in her being marked down in a board exam.
Should the counsellor bring up the issue of her colleague’s teaching style with the principal; would it help if the parents recognized that their behaviours or including her in conversations about their troubledfinances was affecting her significantly; or would it be wise to involve the teacher directly but in a manner where the teacher would not feel blamed?
In Case 4, the counsellor is aware that in the background of child abuse that the student has shared, issues related to trusting an adult are going to be central to the counselling relationship. Does the counsellor believe in the student’s abilities to put an effective stop to her drinking on her own? What evidence does she have from the
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student’s life history that would give her this sense of confidence? Do the parents not have a right to know? What if the parents found out inadvertently from the daughter; would not they feel that if they had been informed earlier they could have made a difference to her life? If the student was engaging in an illegal behaviour such as underage drinking, should the school authorities know or would with- holding this piece of information about the student be perceived as the counsellor colluding with the student against them?
5.3.5 Teachers as Counsellors
In a country of 1.2 billion citizens and counting, the statistics of the number of trained mental health professionals in relation to the population that require their services are dismal. The need to look at alternative/community-based options for early identification and intervention of emotional and/or behavioural conditions in children has increasingly focused on schools as viable sites. Sensitization pro- grammes on mental health in schools (Kapur1998) alert teachers to early warning signs of disturbance and working on basic counselling skills with children and adolescents.
Teacher–student interactions over time allow for counselling opportunities to arise in an organic process. Teachers can sometimes be drawn into establishing a counselling role with a student who chooses to confide in them. This may occur in schools where there is no designated counsellor as well as in schools where there may be a professional on campus (Miller et al.1993). Teachers enter into coun- selling situations out of a need to address the stress that the student may be experiencing. The ethics of teachers as counsellors is a grey zone and one that does not get addressed often enough by school counsellors. It is fairly common for the school counsellor to be approached by a teacher who mentions that a student has confided in her about a personal issue but does not want to meet with the counsellor to address it. The counsellor takes on a secondary role—that of a proxy counsellor and supervisor, supporting the teacher to the best possible extent.
Teachers are required to take on pastoral duties in their classrooms in interacting with their students; these, however, need to be viewed differently from a teacher who engages in in-depth counselling with students. The ethical issues that the teacher practitioner has to contend with are recognizing the boundaries of their role in terms of acknowledging a power differential in the relationship, role conflicts between a traditional teacher role versus that of a non-judgemental and supportive counsellor, training, counselling competence, availability and time. The counsellor should also be quick to spot early signs of the teacher feeling emotionally burdened with this role and when it becomes imperative to make a professional referral in a manner that allows for the student to continue experiencing a sense of support and caring from her teacher.
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