Counseling & Relationships
Informed Consent
Clients have the freedom to choose whether to enter into or remain in a counseling relationship and need adequate information about the counseling process and the counselor. Informed consent is an ongoing part of the counseling process, and counselors properly document discussions of informed consent through the counseling relationship.
Confidentiality of Records and Documentation
Counselors ensure that records and documentation kept in any medium are secure and that only authorized persons have access to them.
Purpose of Assessment
To gather information regarding the client for a variety of purposes, including, but not limited to, client decision making, treatment planning, and forensic proceedings. Assessments may include both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
Evaluation
Supervisors document and provide supervisees with ongoing feedback regarding their performance and schedule periodic formal evaluative sessions throughout the supervisory relationship.
Define: Justice
Treating individuals equitably and fostering fairness and equality.
Prohibited Noncounseling Roles and Relationships
Sexual and/or Romantic Relationships, Previous Sexual and/or Romantic Relationships, Sexual and/or Romantic Relationships with Former Clients, Friends or Family Members, Personal Virtual Relationships with Current Clients.
Exceptions to Confidentiality
Serious and Foreseeable Harm and Legal Requirements, End-of-Life Decisions, Contagious Life-Threatening Diseases, Court-Ordered Disclosure. When circumstances require the disclosure of circumstantial information, only essential information is revealed.
Instrument Selection Criteria
Counselors carefully consider the validity, reliability, psychometric limitations, and appropriateness of instruments when selecting assessments and, when possible, use multiple forms of assessment, data, and/or instruments in forming conclusions, diagnoses, or recommendations.
Ethical Requirements
Students and supervisees have a responsibility to understand and follow the ACA Code of Ethics. Students and supervisees have the same obligation to clients as those required of professional counselors.
Define: Nonmaleficence
Avoiding actions that cause harm.
Abandonment and Client Neglect
Counselors do not abandon or neglect clients in counseling. Counselors assist in making appropriate arrangements for the continuation of treatment, when necessary, during interruptions such as vacations, illness, and following termination.
Professional Competence
Counselors practice only within the boundaries of their competence, based on their education, training, supervision experience, state and national professional credentials, and appropriate professional experience. Multicultural competency is required across all counseling specialties, counselors gain knowledge, personal awareness, sensitivity, dispositions, and skills pertinent to being a culturally competent counselor in working with a diverse population.
Considerations in Reporting Results
When reporting an assessment, counselors must consider the client’s personal and cultural background, the level of the client’s understanding of the results, and the impact of the results on the client.
Counselor Educator Competence
Counselors who function as counselor educators or supervisors provide instruction within their areas of knowledge and competence and provide instruction based on current information and knowledge available in the profession.
Define: Beneficence
Working for the good of the individual and society by promoting mental health and well-being.
Protection from Punitive Action
Counselors do not harass a colleague or employee or dismiss an employee who has acted in a responsible and ethical manner to expose inappropriate employer policies or practices,
Recruitment Through Employment
Counselors do not use their place of employment or institutional affiliation to recruit clients, supervisors, or consulates for their private practices.
Case Examples in Publications
The use of participants’, clients’, students’, or supervisees’ information for the purpose of case examples in a presentation or publication is permissible only when (a) participants, clients, students, or supervisees have reviewed the material and agreed to its presentation or publication or (b) the information has been sufficiently modified to obscure identity..
Ethical Decision Making
When counselors are faced with and ethical dilemma, they use and document, as appropriate, an ethical decision-making model that may include, but is not limited to, consultation; consideration of relevant ethical standards, principles, and laws; generation of potential courses of action; deliberation of risks and benefits; and selection of an objective decision based on the circumstances and welfare of all involved.
Define: Fidelity
Honoring commitments and keeping promises, including fulfilling one’s responsibilities of trust in professional relationships.
Legal Considerations for Distance Counseling
Counselor must ensure they obtain any required certifications or additional course work to provide distance counseling services. Counselors must also ensure clients are aware of law and regulations of the counselor’s practicing location and the client’s place of residence.
Pro Bono Publico
Counselors make a reasonable effort to provide services to the public for which there is little or no financial return (e.g., speaking to groups, sharing professional information, offering reduced fees).
Duplicate Submissions
Counselors submit manuscripts for consideration to only one journal at a time. Manuscripts that are published in whole or in substantial part in one journal or published work are not submitted for publication to another publisher without acknowledgment and permission from the original publisher.
Informal Resolution
When counselors have reason to believe that another counselor is violating or has violated an ethical standard and substantial harm has not occurred, they attempt to first resolve the issue informally with the other counselor if feasible, provided such action does not violate confidentiality rights that may be involved.
Define: Veracity
Dealing truthfully with individuals with whom counselors come into professional contact.