Ethical and Legal Considerations in Supervision

Mitigating Ethical or Legal Misconduct

Violations of professional boundaries, multiple client relationships, confidentiality breaches, and communication difficulties are the four primary areas of potential vulnerabilities for supervisors who oversee the actions of supervisees with clients. It is therefore ethically and legally vital for supervisors to obtain ongoing consultation regarding these issues in order to uphold the highest level of ethical and legal practice.

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To prepare for this Discussion, read the Learning Resources. Then, consider the most important and effective methods available to supervisors to ensure that their work is ethically and legally sound.

Write two scenarios that illustrate legal and/or ethical violations that a supervisor might encounter. Be sure that each scenario exemplifies a different category of vulnerability enumerated above (violations of professional boundaries, multiple inappropriate relationships, confidentiality breaches, and communication difficulties).

READINGS

Cobia, D. C., & Boes, S. R. (2000). Professional disclosure statements and formal plans for supervision: Two strategies for minimizing the risk of ethical conflicts in post-master’s supervision. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(3), 293–296.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Falender, C. A., & Shafranske, E. P. (2004). Clinical supervision: A competency-based approach. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
- Appendix A, “Sample Supervision Contract Outline” (pp. 233–236)
- Appendix G, “Competencies of Supervisors” (pp. 257–263)
Koocher, G. P., Shafranske, E. P., & Falender, C.A. (2008). Addressing ethical and legal issues in clinical supervision. In C. A. Falender & E. P. Shafranske (Eds.), Casebook for clinical supervision: A competency-based approach (pp. 159–180). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.