The practice of play and creative arts therapies depends on gaining and
honouring the trust of clients. Keeping trust requires:
- Attentiveness to the quality of listening and respect offered to clients
- Culturally appropriate ways of communicating that are courteous and clear respect for privacy and dignity
- Respect for privacy and dignity
- Careful attention to client consent and confidentiality
Specific issues covered below are:
Informing Clients
Consent
Risk Situations
Special Considerations
Confidentiality
Providing Information
Protection Against Abuse
Intrusion of Personal Views
Commitments
Clients and their carers should be adequately informed about the nature
of the services being offered. Practitioners should obtain adequately
informed consent from the carers and clients and respect their right to
choose whether to continue or withdraw.
Practitioners should ensure that services are normally delivered on the
basis of the client's explicit consent. Reliance on implicit consent is more
vulnerable to misunderstandings and is best avoided unless there are sound
reasons for doing so. Overriding a client's known wishes or consent is a
serious matter that requires commensurate justification. Practitioners
should be prepared to be readily accountable to clients, carers, colleagues
and professional body if they override a client's known wishes.
Situations in which clients pose a risk of causing serious harm to
themselves or others are particularly challenging for the practitioner.
These are situations in which the practitioner should be alert to the
possibility of conflicting responsibilities between those concerning their
client, other people who may be significantly affected, and society
generally. Resolving conflicting responsibilities may require due
consideration of the context in which the service is being provided.
Consultation with a supervisor or experienced practitioner is strongly
recommended, whenever this would not cause undue delay. In all cases, the
aim should be to ensure for the client a good quality of care that is as
respectful of the client's capacity for self determination and their trust
as circumstances permit.
Working with young people requires specific ethical awareness and
competence. The practitioner is required to consider and assess the balance
between young peoples' dependence on adults and carers and their progressive
development towards acting independently.
Working with children and young people requires careful consideration of
issues concerning their capacity to give consent to receiving any service
independently of someone with parental responsibilities and the management
of confidences disclosed by clients.
Respecting client confidentiality is a fundamental requirement for
keeping trust. The professional management of confidentiality concerns the
protection of personally identifiable and sensitive information from
unauthorised disclosure. Disclosure may be authorised by client consent or
the law. Any disclosures should be undertaken in ways that best protect the
client's trust. Practitioners should be willing to be accountable to their
clients and to their profession for their management of confidentiality in
general and particularly for any disclosures made without their client's
consent.
Practitioners should normally be willing to respond to their client's and
carers’ requests for information about the way that they are working and any
assessment that they may have made. This professional requirement does not
apply if it is considered that imparting this information would be
detrimental to the client or inconsistent with the therapeutic approach
previously agreed with the client. Clients and those legally responsible for
them may have legal rights to this information and these need to be taken into account.
Practitioners must not abuse their client's trust in order to gain
sexual, emotional, financial or any other kind of personal advantage. Sexual
relations with clients and carers are prohibited. 'Sexual relations include
intercourse, any other type of sexual activity or sexualised behaviour.
Practitioners should think carefully about, and exercise considerable
caution before, entering into personal or business relationships with former
clients, their carers or those legally responsible for them and should expect to be professionally accountable if the
relationship becomes detrimental to the client or the standing of the
profession.
Practitioners should not allow their professional relationships with
clients to be prejudiced by any personal views they may hold about
lifestyle, gender, age, disability, race, sexual orientation, beliefs or
culture.
Practitioners should be clear about any commitment to be available to
clients and colleagues and honour these commitments.
Back to Introduction to the Ethical Framework
