Hi, Sue,
I am coming a little late into this discussion, but my own experience
might be helpful.
I used to work as a counselling psychologist trainee for a charity. I
was told that I was not allowed to see clients privately when I had
already seen them at the charity premises. From what I understood, that
is usually the case and is in itself ethical, in that it removes any
opportunity for the counsellor to tout for business or to be accused of
it.
However, when I left there one client expressed the wish to see me
privately and said so to the management. Obviously I did not encourage
her to do so. Because I had been seeing the client for some time, I was
allowed to take her on.
From this, it seems to me that the notion of 'ethics' in relation to the
interface between agency and private work has to be fluid and capable of
many interpretations. In the case you mention there are many
ambiguities and I question the ethics of 'closing the door' on a client
(ie being unable to support him/her and yet not allowing him/her to
continue privately with the counsellor).
I am also uncomfortable about any 'ownership' of a client, other than
the client's ownership of him/herself!
Hope this helps,
Sue
>I was talking with a colleague about a counsellor who took a client from an
>agency and the comment was automatically made about this being
>unethical.
>
>In the situation we were discussing, the counsellor is qualified, the agency
>could no longer support the client and the agency doesn't appear to have a
>written policy on this. (There are other circumstance that mitigate the
>situation but these weren't know as the time).
>
>What I am interesting in is the concept of it being unethical to take a client
>from the agency. I have come across this comment before when a trainee
>and
>hadn't really thought too much about it as I had considered it to be a
>competence issue. However, this isn't the case here and so this is making
>me
>think about client autonomy and the agency's ownership of a client.
>
>So I wonder if any of you out there would like to comment on this. Does
>anyone
>know of any articles on this topic?
>
>Thanks
>Sue
>
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Sue Vogel, BA., MSc., C.Psychol.,
1 to 1 Counselling Service
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