David Kaplan's Presentation
By Mary Pat Mueller
One of the benfits of becoming the President-Elect of this organization is the opportunity to attend the American Counseling Association's Midwest Leadership Conferences held every year. This year the conference was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 5th – October 7th. This is the second Leadership Conference I have attended, as I was able to attend several years ago when it was held in Omaho, Nebraska. ACA again did an outstanding job of creating the right mix of leadership sessions aimed at new and seasoned leaders and the networking opportunities with leaders from other states were great. In addition to the branch leaders swap, I attended sessions on marketing your association, strategic planning, the organizational structure of ACA, the regions business meeting, and a great session on the new ACA code of ethics.
David Kaplan's presentation of the new ACA code of ethics highlighted new ethical imperatives that will impact counselors in the Midwest Region branches. One of the changes in the new ethics is the removal of dual relationships. Now when I was going to school, and while doing my internship, dual relationships was something that was talked about a lot. Living in a small rural town, it is something that is hard to get away from. But most certainly, if you were seeing a client, unless you were doing family therapy you did not also see their children, or siblings. The new ACA code of ethics opens that up. I know living in a small Midwestern town there have been many times when I have been approached by a client to see both the mother and the child in individual sessions or two siblings. Until now I have had to tell those clients that I can only do therapy with one person from the family unless it is family therapy. The new ACA code of ethics now states that if you talk to both clients, you weigh the pros and cons of seeing them both and all agree that there are more pros to the "dual" relationship, you may counsel both clients separately in individual therapy. That is a huge change.
Another change that David Kaplan spoke about was the change in the code concerning intimate or sexual relationship with a client. In the old code, if a counselor was seeing a client he/she could not have an intimate or sexual relationship with that client for a period of two years from the end of counseling. In the new code they have changed that two year period to five years and added that a counselor may not have an intimate or sexual relationship with the client or anyone in their family.
For more information about the new ACA code of ethics go to the ACA website. You can download the new code their. As always feel free to contact me about any of your concerns, ideas, desires for leadership, etc. at mp@wcenet.com or 605-734-6210.