Question

Please Answer the following questions after you read the case.

PY625 Case #2  Analysis

The Brown Family. A family, Sheila and Roy Brown and their daughter, Heather (age 14), had been seeing Anne, a licensed professional counselor, for about three months.  They had sought counseling “to save their marriage and help Heather deal with the conflict in the home.”  During that time, Anne had three family sessions and the rest were couple sessions.  After the above sessions, she suggested that seeing Sheila and Roy individually for a few sessions might be helpful.  She saw them both for three individual sessions but, after his third individual session, Roy decided to no longer participate in counseling.  After he terminated, Anne continued to see Sheila alone and sometimes with Heather for a period of four months.  She also saw Heather individually for three sessions.  During this time, the marriage deteriorated and divorce proceedings were started.  A week ago, Anne received a subpoena from Roy’s lawyer to produce all of your records pertaining to Sheila and Heather’s treatment.  Sheila has told you not to comply with the subpoena.

Answer the Following Questions

1.  Identify 3 major moral principles that are involved in the case? Briefly describe how they are involved.

2.  Identify 7 to 10 standards of the ACA ethical code (Use the ACA 2014 Code of Ethics) that are involved in the case?  Give the ACA Code Standard number and a brief description of how it is involved.

3.  What practices or procedures, which if in place, might eliminate or mitigate the ethical dilemma?

4.  Given the current situation, what course of action would you recommend for the counselor to implement?

Answer 1

1. Three moral principles:

• Autonomy-where there is respect for individual decisions such as Roy wanting to discontinue therapy.
• Justice- Which involves treating clients based on their individual's needs and special consideration instead of having a one size fits all, as seen in the form of different types of sessions-couple, family and individual sessions taken by Anne to address specific needs by the client.
• Fidelity-Where there is a trust established between the clients and the counsellor-where Roy trusts Anne to disclose information about treatment during a subpoena, and Shelia trusts the counsellor to do so otherwise.

2. Gold Standards:

A]The counseling relationship:

• A.1.a. Client welfare where the counsellor has the welfare of the client as the primary goal.

B]Confidentiality and privacy:

• B.4.b-Couples and Family Counselling -Counsellors need to clearly define who is the client and set expectations accordingly.
• B.2.d. and B.2.e Court-ordered disclosure, where the counsellor can disclose only with the written permission of the client and should keep the disclosure as minimal, as possible; or take steps to prohibit the disclosure.
• B.5.b, B.5.c-Responsilbiity to parents and release of confidential information of Minor-when the counseling minor clients, consent must be taken from parents; and incase of disclosing information about a minor need to seek appropriate measures to safeguard their confidentiality

I] Resolving ethical issues:

• I.1.b -Ethical decision making-When faced with a dilemma, the counselor uses an ethical decision-making model and makes an objective decision considering the circumstances and everyone's welfare, which may include consultation with appropriate sources and considering the relevant standards and laws.

3: Practices to eliminate the dilemma:

There needs to be some criteria set legally for requesting counseling records-which unless met, one cannot ask for them, and counselors need to maintain their stance of no/minimal disclosure for the same. In case of records being permitted for a minor, the request could be approved by a child guidance law committee before it is considered as a necessity to be approved in court.

4: Course of action:

The counselor needs to weigh the pros and cons of the situation and consider what the laws of the particular area are like. With the help of her client and appropriate third party consultations, she may try to claim for non-disclosure; which if not possible, needs to consider providing minimal disclosure, if consent is given by the client after due discussions.