Unit 2 Written Assignment: Applying the Ethical Decision-Making Model

FO611 Unit 2 Written Assignment Details/ Instructions

Assignment Overview

Please review before completing assignment. (PDF’s provided online)

• Historical and Professional Foundations of Counselling

• American Counselling Association (ACA): Our History

The past events, especially legal and ethical blunders, have affected how the counseling profession has evolved with regard to the ethics codes. Legal issues bring about case law, which prompts changes in ethics codes.

There are several roles that counselors may have in their career aside from duty to assist their individual clients. One such role is in public policy making and advocating for clients on a larger level. Public policy making and advocacy is crucial to the development of sound laws in order to protect basic human rights such as equal treatment of people of color or individuals with disabilities. Counselors are in a unique position to use their gained knowledge to help in these efforts, as well as to shape ethics codes in their profession which are a set of rules for all counselors to follow. Ethics codes are extremely important in order to set a standard of behaviors for all counselors so that basic human rights are protected which prevents harm to consumers.

Given this history, counseling professionals wanted and needed to develop a process for finding ways to think through the more difficult cases since not all cases are clear cut. Therefore, ethical decision making models evolved.

In your assignment add one historical date in this reading that captured your attention as it relates to the following case.

Assignment Instructions

Using the ethical decision-making model from the notes below, apply it to the following vignette. You may also use these resources included for your reference. (Provided online)

• Welfel PowerPoint

• Resolving ethical dilemmas: Models for making decisions.

NOTES FOR ASSIGNMENT

You are seeing a client who is on probation for being convicted of a drug crime, which included mandated counseling, probation meetings, revoking his driver’s license and reassessment of risk to abuse illicit substances. You are the only provider in your small community that offers this service (substance abuse evaluations and monitoring). You have been seeing this client for one year and almost completed treatment, however recently has been missing appointments. You are concerned he is using again. The court is interested in your evaluation of the client to determine if he should be discharged from his probation. You do not feel comfortable allowing him to be discharged from probation due to past history of violent behaviors your client displays when he is using and your concerns he is using again.

While trying to decide how to proceed with the evaluation, your friend wants to introduce you to her new boyfriend and she invites you to a wine- tasting party. You arrive early and begin to enjoy a glass of wine. After a couple glasses of wine, your friend’s boyfriend arrives and he happens to be the client to which you are supposed to complete the evaluation. Before you could be introduced, you noticed he was served a glass of the wine. When the client sees you, he is concerned you will use the information about him drinking in your evaluation. He threatens to tell the court that you are out-to-get him (and is the reason for the bad evaluation) because you are a drunk yourself.

Use the steps of the model as an organization for this assignment. Be thorough. For the ethical standards section, do your best while referring to the ACA Code of Ethics as we have not covered the standards in detail yet.

Paper Requirements

• Three (3) pages not including title or reference pages.

• Double-spaced, 12-point font, 1-inch margins

• APA Format