Drawing on the ASCA and BACP Code of Ethics, this chapter concludes with a core set of ethical considerations that school counsellors mayfind relevant in their practice. These ethical considerations do not presume to be comprehensive enough to cater to the range of roles that a counsellor is required to handle in a school; they hope to provide instead a basic framework that would encourage ethical practice.
5.5.1 Responsibilities to Students
Counsellors should treat all students with dignity and respect. Students come in from a range of different belief and value systems and cultural contexts which need to be acknowledged and respected. The counsellor should be mindful of not imposing their values or what constitutes right/moral behaviour on the student.
Encourage and support the student’s need to move towards personal and social growth.
Teachers and parents may have their specific views of the student that may well be accurate but the counsellor is required to maintain an objective attitude and an open mind in listening to the student.
Explain the limits of confidentiality to the student in age-appropriate language.
Inform parents/care givers if there is danger to the child’s or other’s life.
Maintain an appropriate professional distance during and between sessions and also on social networking sites.
Necessary referrals to competent external authorities should be made when the counsellor recognizes that the student’s range of difficulties is not what they have sufficient training for or that the student may benefit from multidisciplinary inputs.
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If the student requires psychological and/or cognitive assessments which would provide useful information in providing appropriate interventions, the counsellor should use relevant and appropriate tests that are current and—have training for in terms of administration and interpretation. Test information should be communi- cated in a manner that can be understood by the student and the parent.
The counsellor should exercise care in storing confidential student records such as session notes, test reports and profiles.
When working with students in groups, recognize that confidentiality, how students respond to it and whether they choose to honour it cannot be guaranteed.
When engaging in group work with younger children, the counsellor should seek parental informed consent.
The counsellor should be conscious of not aligning with the student—or taking sides against the school or parent in an effort to be popular with students or wanting to be appreciated by the student.
5.5.2 Responsibilities to School
The counsellor should have a good understanding of the school’s vision and philosophy.
Each school follows its unique set of processes in regulating the events of the day; some of these may be unwritten codes that the counsellor would need to be aware of.
Defining the role of the counsellor, boundaries regarding what information can be shared and sensitizing school administration and faculty to the functioning of counsellors on campus is an ongoing task that the counsellor needs to engage in at formal levels, such as workshops, staff meetings, sending outflyers or emails and at informal levels through regular conversations.
Most schools are strongly hierarchical in nature and they tend to have clear and fixed lines of command. The counsellor would need to be aware of and respectful of these.
The counsellor should stay informed of existing and new school and affiliated exam board policies and how it impacts school and student functioning.
The counsellor should strive to develop collaborative relationships with school administration and faculty and recognize the importance of their roles.
Counsellors should be appreciative of the teachers’workload in context of the complexities of classroom dynamics and in addressing issues of classroom or specific student management—recognize teachers as collaborators and not assume a prescriptive approach with what they think will work in the classroom or benefit a student.
If a student is visiting the counsellor during an instructional period, the coun- sellor should be prompt in informing the teacher concerned and if possible avoid seeing a student when the teacher has announced a test or is introducing a new topic to the class.
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The counsellor should conduct themselves with dignity and maintain profes- sional relationships with school faculty.
5.5.3 Responsibilities to Parents
In working with minors, counsellors would need to remember that legal rights of the parents supersede ethical concerns of the counsellor.
The counsellor would need to establish collaborative relationships with the parents and share accurate and objective information with them that would be in the best interests of the child.
Counsellors should treat all parents with dignity and respect, recognizing that they come from a range of cultural backgrounds and value systems.
Parents should be invited to meetings where counsellors can provide information on the counselling process in an effort to demystify it and clarify parent queries.
5.5.4 Responsibilities to Self
The counsellor should identify and consult with an experienced peer or supervisor regularly as this would benefit their reflective practice and also allow them to feel supported in their sometimes difficult moments.
Counsellors should recognize their limitations in working with different stake- holders in terms of their training and experience and take responsibility for their actions. They should seek to enhance their professional competence by participating in conferences, attending training workshops and staying engaged with latest research in thefield.
Counsellors do experience stress which may impact on their competence levels.
It is hence important that they attend to their physical and emotional health and wellbeing.
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Chapter 6
Ethical Issues in Working with Couples and Families
Sobhana H., Priya Saxena and Buli Nag Daimari
Abstract Most mental health practitioners of couple and family therapy agree that engaging couples and families in therapy is a very challenging prospect. Like all therapeutic interactions, the practice of couple and family therapy is also governed by ethical frameworks. In India, there is no statutory body that specifically regulates the practice of couple and family therapy. Hence, most therapists rely on inter- pretations and adaptations of codes of ethics from other countries. Practitioners also rely on their experiences and consultations with peers and colleagues to deal with situations that pose serious ethical issues. This chapter primarily focuses on ethical issues with regard to responsibility, confidentiality and therapist’s values. Other ethical concerns like multicultural competencies, maintaining professional bound- aries and legal obligations that are specific to Indian context are also discussed.
Each of these issues is explained, followed by case illustrations drawn from the authors’ clinical practice. The case illustrations highlight ethical concerns contex- tualized to the Indian couple and family therapy practice setting.
Keywords Ethical issues
Couple and family therapyValuesFamily therapy in IndiaEthics and lawPersonal and professional values and ethical standards are vital in any form of therapy. As mental health professionals we have to understand the underlying values of the couple and family system, the context in which we work and our own personal H. Sobhana (&)B.N. Daimari
Department of Psychiatric Social Work, LGB Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur, Assam 784001, India
e-mail: [email protected] B.N. Daimari
e-mail: [email protected] P. Saxena
Department of Clinical Psychology, LGB Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur 784001, India
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 P. Bhola and A. Raguram (eds.),Ethical Issues in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1808-4_6
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values. Ethical standards provide the guidelines on expressions of values and pro- vide us with the“dos and do nots”of working in a therapeutic context. Therapists face several situations that call for ethical judgements and decision-making tofind solutions to dilemmas and conflicting areas (Ables and Brandsma1977).
Most couple and family therapists will agree that engaging their clients in therapy has many challenges. Every stage of therapy requires making ethical decisions that can impact the course and outcome of therapy. Ethical decision-making requires reflective awareness and sensitivity. Discordant personal and professional values can be a source of ethical dilemmas for practitioners and there are often no easy solutions to these conflicts. In such a scenario, the practitioner must consider the context of the client; their rights, professional obligations and integrity. Gambrill (2008), Strom-Gottfried (2008) recommend considering the following factors:
• The couples’/families’interests, rights and values.
• The interests and rights of others involved in the situation.
• The professional code of ethics and how this relates to the situation.
• Personal values and ethical stance, practice setting, policies and procedures that relate to the situation.
• The legal and licensing regulations and implication of each intervention decision.
In the West, professional organizations like the American Association of Marital and Family Therapists (AAMFT2012) clearly lay down the ethical code of conduct for marital and family therapists, which are updated from time to time. The AAMFT code consists of the following areas: responsibility to clients, confidentiality, pro- fessional competence and integrity, responsibility to students and supervisors, responsibility to research participants, responsibility to profession, financial arrangements and advertising (Goldberg and Goldberg2008).
Unlike other countries, in India, in the absence of a statutory body to regulate the practice of couple and family therapy, practitioners tend to rely on interpretations and adaptations of code of ethics from other countries as well as on training, experiences with clients and support from peers and colleagues. The recent draft version of the updated ethics guidelines of the Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists (IACP 2015) has a section focused on working with couples and families. Some of the pertinent areas of ethics to be kept in mind while working with families and couples as seen from ethics codes in other countries and in India are delineated below.