6 Professional Ethics of a Counsellor

M. Priya

Introduction:

Counselling is a professional field like any other profession which needs vital attention to the matters, selection and training. In India, owing to many factors such as overpopulation, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, neglects the service of counselling profession has been neglected. It cannot be emphasised that counselling must find a place in the field of school, college and universities. There are several other avenues in which counselling become commanding such as in the field of education, health, family, marriage and nutrition. Counsellors can be made professionally competent with suitable training programmes. Every profession has its own ethical code of conduct and can be evolved and implemented through licensing and certification measures. We could follow some of the principles, code of conduct, ethical standards like in advanced countries.

As we all know counselling is a helping profession in which that underlies the roles, responsibilities, functions of a counsellor. There are numerous unique legal and ethical concerns that clinicians should consider when counselling children, adolescents, and their families. Counselling profession is one in which members are especially trained and licensed or certified under to perform unique and needed services for human beings for different kinds of issues. These counsellors (helping professions) are recognised by the society as per their services offered, like law, medicine, education, psychology, psychiatry, social work or child related issues (Gibson, R.L. and Mitchell, M.H., 2008).

Objectives:

To know who is a professional counsellor and his responsibilities
To understand counselling preparation and professional issues
To identify the activities of a professional counsellor
To be aware of legal and ethical issues pertaining to counselling profession

The Professional Counsellor:

The term professional counsellor distinguishes the profession from those who represent with family, industry, sales and so on. These professionals are full time active representatives of their profession and they accept the responsibilities of professionalism. These type of counsellors have good educational background, training, work experience, designation, nature of setting and characteristics. These professional features help in establishing a nature of professional identity of counsellors in the society.

Responsibilities of a Professional Counsellor:

Professional counsellors must be trained and qualified to meet the needs of the client in society. This training would be an appropriate graduate level or master’s degree level which should make them an understanding and awareness of the theories guiding professional practice.
Professional counsellors should seek and obtain the certification which in appropriate to their training, practice and background.
Professional counsellors need to be committed professionally and personally to update and upgrade their knowledge, skills and attitude to reflect ongoing progress in their field.
Professional counsellors should contribute themselves in conducting research studies through professional writing, presentations, meetings, conducting workshops/seminars etc.
Professional counsellors should have active participation in local, regional, state, national and international level organizations as a member.
Professional counsellors are aware of all legaland ethical guidelines in the field of counselling and its practice.

Personal moral qualities of a Professional counsellor:

Every Professional counsellor’s moral qualities are most important to the clients. Various personal qualities considered as utmost important in the provision of services have an ethical or moral constituent and are subsequently considered as virtues or good personal qualities. It is unsuccessful to recommend that all practitioners possess these qualities, since it is important that these personal qualities are deeply rooted in the person concerned and developed out of personal commitment rather than the obligation of an external expert. Individual qualities to which counsellors and psychotherapists are strongly encouraged to seek include:

Empathy: the ability to communicate understanding of another person’s experience from that person’s perspective.
Sincerity: a personal commitment to consistency between what is professed and what is done.
Integrity: commitment to being moral in dealings with others, personal straightforwardness, honesty and coherence.
Resilience: the capacity to work with the client’s concerns without being personally diminished.
Respect: showing appropriate esteem to others and their understanding of themselves.
Humility: the ability to assess accurately and acknowledge one’s own strengths and weaknesses.
Competence: the effective deployment of the skills and knowledge needed to do what is required.
Fairness: the consistent application of appropriate criteria to inform decisions and actions.
Wisdom: possession of sound judgement that informs practice.
Courage: the capacity to act in spite of known fears, risks and uncertainty (Tim Bond, 2010).

Counsellor preparation and professional issues:

The type of preparation of an individual to satisfy any kind of job will be depending upon the nature of job. Job analysis always helps in understanding the job requirements, the preparation and training needed for every job depends upon its performance, routine activities and the height of complexity. The work of professional job would not be routine rather it’s changing, challenging and also requires analysis, synthesis, evaluation and critical appraisal. Thus any time preparation could be given importance and it’s a continuous process which never be complete and concluding. Each professional individual should update their knowledge constantly with day today events. He could be called upon to deal with varieties of situations and issues in which his specific training sometimes may not been equipped him for. In that case he has to generalise the situations through his experience to take responsible actions or decisions. An important concern for counselling is the growing demand for early assortment and training personnel. There is a need to help people with increasing complexities of modern living and frustrating situations. Social change also increases the need for raising the level of competence in counselling.

During the last decades, people are treating every kind of situation or failure as mental illness such as school phobias, underachievement, and child delinquency. These deviations require special attention and treatment with proper educational and experienced professionals.

The nature of ethics:

A code of ethics represents the values of a profession transformed into standards of conduct for the membership. Ethics provides the structure or guidelines for a professional member to follow professional practice and also for the society to help the client issues which affecting their lives. The ethical issue of competence begins when the counsellor accepts a position as a professional counsellor.

In India, for making counsellors professionally competent suitable training programmes have to be evolved and implemented every profession must have an ethical code of conduct for its members and should be implemented through licensing and certification procedures.

In the early decades of the present century, the counselling movement tend to emphasise the need for appropriate methods, sound theoretical basis for practice. Individuals who are engaged in professional counselling have to face 3 basic issues. These are

The procedure of selection and training.
Academic preparation to reach the level of profession, adequate knowledge and understanding of principles and dynamics of human growth, developments, motivation, adjustments and coping skills.
Methods of analysing problems and appropriate application of skills.

Ethical standards:

The ethical issues or concerns which invariably accompany the development of a profession. According to Wrenn (1952), a profession implies ‘professional’ relations with the members of the society and counselling relationship in a highly personal one and also a chance of its abuse. It is true that some of the counsellors would misuse the counsellor-counselee relationship. On the job-the counsellor is responsible professionally to practice within his/her limitations. It is therefore, essential that professional rules/ethics could be laid out in no ambiguous terms. This may create public trust and confidence in the profession.

Schwebel (1955) explains unethical practice may arise from ignorance, inadequate training and self-interest. All these instances would be viewed as unethical behaviour. However, society cannot be at the mercy of ignorant or ill-trained professional counsellors. This can be secured by a system of certification or licensing. A statement of such certification is utmost important for an individual as well as community.

Ethical issues of a professional counsellor:

Ethics refers to human conduct as to make judgements between what is right and wrong. It could be that there are several factors that may encourage one to adopt unethical behaviour. A right person is the one who can assess the situations and make differentiation between what is morally good and wrong in order to follow the code of professional counsellor. Thus, maintaining ethical standards is must for the wealth of an organization as well as the development of one’s personality. Good ethics will lead every individual to maintain their honest image.

Following are some of the ethical issues in which every professional counsellor should follow:

1. Competence

The ethical issue of competence begins with the counsellor acceptance as a professional counsellor. The counsellor must possess appropriate qualifications, experience, license and certification for his/her position. When a professional counsellor knows that client expectations are beyond their competencies they should identify a suitable professional for that client.

2. Confidentiality

The utmost important ethical consideration is confidentiality. Trust is a vital keystone in client-counsellor relationship and it is the principle of confidentiality. This may be viewed as ethical responsibility which requires professional counsellor to protect from others the information shared by client during counselling process. The information shared by the client may be sensitive in nature, even a slight careless handling of the information may cause harmful situations and also unethical to a professional counsellor. Lewis (1970) listed out some of the ethical practices, these are

It is unethical to share the client information with others, but discussing information’s about a client with professional counsellor is not unethical.
A professional counsellor should not interrupt the principle of confidentiality. If third party is present in the counselling room, then client must know the reason of their presence and he has every right to permit or deny the person.
Special circumstances and situations across the family may vary the counselling process and its confidentiality. Special circumstances related to confidentiality and privilege include counselling the persons with HIV/AIDS, minors or school settings or children with behavioural problems, child maltreatment etc.
Counsellor need not disclose any of the information’s to any government body or authority, the professional counsellor must give foremost importance to the client rather than others.
Licensing and certification are used as the basis for legally controlling the practice of several professional areas, but in USA, the figures are in force to ensure proper management through licencing and certification. Whereas in India it has not yet attracted the attention of state or central government in legal acceptance of certification and licensing. The statues (figures) should cover the broad areas such as marriage, family, child, school, parent, educational, vocational and personal etc.

Exceptions to confidentiality and privileged communications given by Ramley and Herlihy (2001) are Sharing personal and confidential information’sis permissible under the following circumstances:

Counsellor can consult with other experts for better results.
Protecting someone in the dangerous situation may require disclosure of confidential information such as when counsellor suspects abuse or neglect of children, if client poses dangerous situations to others, if client has fetal/communicable diseases and his behaviour may cause risk to others.
In case of group counselling, counselling with families and couples.
Counselling with minor clients.
Disclosure by court orders.

3. Personal relationship with the client

Every organisation has to follow limits in the professional relationship. Eg: child maltreatment when the client is minor or mentally ill. Counsellors must be aware of most frequently recognised violations of professional ethics may involve child harassment/ maltreatment/ sexual relationship with the client. If counsellors engage in these issues are at risk for proceedings, loss of license and also court criminal charges. A counsellor must avoid exploiting clients for their financial gain or social status, research data or other ways of motives. He should be aware of human rights of clients.

4. Working with life-endangering clients

This includes situations such as child abuse, neglect, possible homicide, suicide threats, and juvenile cases. These types of cases may be reported and counsellors also require breaching confidentialityif necessary. Counsellors in all situations cannot afford to be legally ignorant; they must understand the law and its implications.

5. Appropriate service

Once the counsellor gets license and certification after training he is permitted to accept any kind of client. He can judge himself as he could manage the client and can provide necessary help or advice to the client. The professional counsellor must honestly believe that he can and specifically understand that he can make efforts to correct any false impressions by the client regarding his qualifications and competence. If necessary, the counsellor can make referral. Infrequently a client may refuse to accept a referral. It is necessary that counsellor should help the client in the critical situations or can terminate the relationship.

6. Malpractice

As previously mentioned, counsellors are expected to function within their professional limits, which is not only ethically expected but also legally appropriate. Some of the most common situations in which legal problems may occur are:

Counsellor may administer drugs to the client to control his behaviour
Giving advice for mental treatment
Giving birth control or abortion related suggestions
Violating confidentiality and disclosing privacy of records
Personal events in the life of profession

Legal considerations:

Licensing and certification are the main basis for controlling legally the practice of several professional areas. In USA and other countries, they follow proper supervision through licensing and certification. But in India it has not yet attracted the attention of doing it either in state or central government. The major reasons for such type of measures are to prevent the pseudo-practitioners from entering in the field. When such types of statutes are made, the professional counsellors can be involved largely in all the fields.

Preparation of a Professional counsellor:

A stable and comprehensive training programme should include

Basic theoretical preparations- Understanding of motivation, human adjustments, psychodynamics, principles of counselling.
Technical and applied knowledge- understanding of test use and interpretation, interviewing skills and competencies in specialised procedures of intervention.
A broad-based workshop and training for enabling the counsellors to meet needs of the client.
Practical training and experience.

Every counsellor must know the culture and the cultural background of clients in which he functions with. Counsellors need to have sound knowledge and precarious understanding of individual differences and its significance. Every cultural differencehas far-reaching effects on individual ethics and personality development.

Some administrators argue that to be a good counsellor, teaching experience is useful. However, it is argued that counselling and teaching has different activities and for a counsellor it is not needed to have teaching experience. Sometimes, teaching attitudes follow authoritarian behaviour whereas counsellors perform specific functions like helping people, he must be kind, sincere, intelligent, able and have a sense of commitment to his profession.

Conclusion:

It is important and mandatory to follow ethical standards, ethical issues and legal concerns for all professional counsellors.

The challenge of working ethically means that practitioners will inevitably encounter situations where there are motivatingresponsibilities. In such situations it is essentialto retreat from all ethical analysis in order to discharge a sense of what may appear to be uncountable ethical conflicts. These ethics are intended to be of assistance in such circumstances by directing attention to the variety of ethical factors that may need to be taken into consideration and to alternative ways of impending ethics that may prove more beneficial. No declaration of ethics can totally aggravate the difficulty of making professional conclusions. By accepting this statement of ethics, members of many other countries for Counselling and Psychotherapy are committing themselves to engaging with the challenge of determined to be ethical, even though doing so involves making difficult decisions or performing courageously. So why can’t we Indians follow all these ethical considerations in the field of counselling?

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References:

Mark Hilsenroth (2014). Psychotherapy, American Psychological Association, USA School Refusal approach at CHB”. Childrenshospital.org. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
Gibson, R.L., Mitchell, M.H. (2008). Introduction to counselling and Guidance, Seventh edition, Prentice-Hall of India Private Ltd, New Delhi.
Lewis, E.C. (1970). The psychology of counselling. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Narayana Rao, S. (2008). Counselling and Guidance, Second edition, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New Delhi.
Ramley, T., and Herilihy, B. (2001). Ethical, legal and professional issues in counselling. Upper Saddle River, NJ:Prentice-Hall.
Swarnima Bhargava, Sriram, S.(2016) Counselling in India, Reflections on the process, 15(226), Springer Science, Singapore.
Tim Bond (2010). Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling & Psychotherapy, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, BACP House, 15 St John’s Business Park, Lutterworth, Leicestershire