Social Legal and Ethical Issues

Egan (2007) describes counselling as an act of explicit offer of time and expertise, involving effective communication skills, genuineness and joint problem solving. Beside the application of core counselling skills, such as active listening, openness and problem solving, there are other areas which the counsellor must be aware of for the achievement of a rapport with his/her client. Professional ethical standards serve as a pillar that forms and strengthens a therapeutic relationship if facilitated and maintained satisfactorily by the counsellor. Some examples of standards are keeping the counsellor client relationship on a professional level, respect for client confidentiality and maintaining boundaries.

Nonetheless, this is a critique on my application of counselling skills exhibited in the practice session i had with Cyan. Having said that things were not going well for him in his personal life and in his counselling profession, Cyan also mentioned that he felt anxious and down. Subsequently, we explored the sources of the anxiety from his personal to his professional life. We further explored his family relationships, his business operation and later explored possible ways he could use to help him cope with stress and anxiety. We identified his anxiety as originating by the lack of support and financial instability then we tried to work on how to deal with those issues. Most importantly this essay looks at my application of counselling skills and my ability to manage the ethical issue which arose in the session.

According to the BAC (cited in Bond, 2005)” counsellors must establish and maintain boundaries around the counselling relationship”. (p.230) identified as an ethical issue in the practice session was when the client said to me “what i was wondering is, can i get your mobile number off you so that i can call you over the weekend or sometime if i need to have a chat”? Personally i saw the client’s desire as a move towards crossing the counsellor

References: Bond, T. (2005) Standards and Ethics for Counselling in Action (2nd ed.) London: Sage Publications. The counsellors and psychotherapists association of NSW (2002) Egan, G. (2007). The skilled helper: A problem management and opportunity-development approach to helping (8th ed.) Geldard, D., & Geldard, K. (2005). Combining Skills to Facilitate the Change Process: In Basic personal counselling: A training manual for counsellors (5th ed., pp. 140-152). Yalom, I. (2001). The here-and-now: Use it, use it, use it; Why use the here-and-now?; Using the here-and-now: Grow rabbit ears; and Search for here-and-now equivalents. In The gift of therapy: Reflections on being a therapist (pp. 46-57). London: Piatkus Publishing.