Ethics In Counseling

1300 Words3 Pages

People deal with different life situation’s every day and counseling is a great way to cope with situations that are hard to cope by oneself. Counselors are faced with these situations and it is extremely important to be prepared and have the proper training to be able to handle a client’s situation to the best of their ability. There are rules and regulations to help keep counselors on a professional level to help guide with situations such as confidentiality, supervisor and trainee relationships, and diversity and clinical experience. In the case study presented the first ethical issue is diversity and clinical experience. James wants to use his father to help boost up his clients because he works for a newspaper. He was anxious to have his first client that he didn’t prepare for that he just took on his first client Lisa whom he was running late and he didn’t even go over the intake documents with her. He just had her sign them without reading them so she really had no idea what it was. James noticed that Lisa was experiencing signs of depression such as loss of appetite, decreased motivation, and overall dissatisfaction. James was supposed to report this to his supervisor but forgot to mention it. In the first place James should have been supervised because he does not have the proper training to handle Lisa’s case because of his lack of diversity. Through training this would have been noted one of his weakness to work on expanding his diversity. Training is just that training and is supposed to be supervised so the trainee knows what their strengths and weaknesses are to help them be successful in counseling. (APA, 2012, standard 2.01) states that psychologists should only provide their service only within the boundaries of their competence (American psychological Association, (2012). ACA 2005 states by working with the diverse than knowledge will be gained (American Counselor’s Association 2005). To avoid the situation James needs to be supervised so he can learn what he needs to work on from the feedback. James needs to be on a case that he is familiar with at first to give him some practice and then later on move to a case like Lisa’s. James needs to make sure that he goes over every document that needs to be signed so the client can understand what they are signing.

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