Right to privacy in school counseling
Ethics of professional counseling
According to the American School Counselor Association, school counselors have various responsibilities towards the counselees, colleagues and the schools in which they are counseling. This organization has a fundamental obligation to the student which demands that such a student should be treated as a unique individual and this should be done with respect. School counselors should be concerned with the social, personal, career, academic and educational needs of the student and should encourage students maximum development. They should respect students beliefs and values and should not impose their own values on the students. They have the obligation to know the policies, regulations and laws that are related to students and should do their best to inform and protect students about their rights.
The school counselors should uphold confidentiality as far as the clients information is concerned. To achieve this, they are expected to inform the student client the rules, techniques, goals and purposes of counseling prior to or at the start of the counseling sessions. The disclosure notice is usually inclusive of legal restraints, privileged communication, and consultation with other professionals. Unless they are required to reveal the information by the law or when by doing they would be preventing danger form happening to the said students or others. School counselors have the responsibility to protect the student clients confidentiality of their records and should only release personal data according to the school policies and laws.
It is important for school counselors to observe the right to privacy of their student clients when establishing counseling relationship and during counseling sessions. Historically, the right to privacy as far as personal information is concerned has always been expressed in the American law. The fifty states recognize it as a statutory or common law right to privacy. Most of the states provide remedy to people whose private facts have been publicly revealed. In Tennessee and California, the right to privacy is considered a constitutional law. Over the years the laws regarding right to privacy have continued being changed in order to meet the needs of different states. This only shows that observing right to privacy during counseling is very important.
Trust is fundamental when developing counseling relationships. Most of the clients who seek counseling services also assume that the information they reveal to the counselor would be known only to the counselor. This gives them confidence to disclose even the most private information about themselves. The code of ethics in counseling requires school counselors to observe the right to privacy and also to keep the student clients information confidential. Revealing such information is likely to result into a chain of effects. For example, if a counselor revealed that a certain student who is his client has a communicable disease such a student is likely to be alienated by the other students even if such disease can only be transmitted through blood. Even when the said student is attended to medically and gets well, the notion that he might still communicate the disease would be likely to remain. Such a student is likely to live in solitude since the other students would not want to be seen with him. He is also likely to feel ashamed associating with other students. Such a student is not likely to concentrate in class and in fact, such a situation might lead to stress. In others, it might lead to depression and the associated problems which come with it. The other students would lose trust with such school counselors who reveal students private information and are unlikely to seek for help from them. Even when such a counselor is relieved off her counseling duties in the school and another one is brought in, students through generalization might lose trust in any other school counselor who comes to their school. This would make students to suffer silently or to turn into other things which they think would reduce their stress like drugs. This is a chain of effects which is likely to cause even more harm since students have different ways of coping with stress.
At times, the schools counselors are required to reveal the student clients information. When this is the case, they should disclose the essential information only and especially if the clients permission is not being considered. However, the student clients condition is likely to cause harm either to themselves or others, the counselor is permitted to reveal the information to the relevant authorities e.g. parents. Also, when a clients information is required during legal proceedings, then the school counselor has a duty to produce the relevant records or testify to the same. Even with the exceptions to confidentiality of clients information, counselors should consider the parents and guardians wishes regarding the extent to which they can reveal the private information of their children.
Legality of right to privacy of minors
Legally, minors are defined as those who have not yet reached the majority age i.e. eighteen years. It is the age which has been accepted to be the right time when young people should acquire the rights of adults. In school counseling, it is also regarded as the age at which clients gain control and full ownership of their rights to privacy. The implications that come with reaching the majority age include making the choices as to whether to enter into counseling and also their rights to confidentiality as well as privacy. In a counseling relationship, minors usually have the ethical right to confidentiality and privacy however, the rights to privacy of minors belong to guardians and parents.
According to Marcus (2006), The Supreme Court has maintained that parents have the legal rights to make all the critical decision regarding the lives of their children. The decision to go into counseling is considered a critical decision. At the same time, counseling is contractual in nature and since the law does not allow minors to take or accept contracts, then parents have to be involved. However, there are some exceptions whereby some states have allowed minors to be given medical services or counseling without the consent of the parents. There are also many states whose laws are allowing minors to be announced a legally emancipated from guardians and parents. Other states permit minors to be viewed as mature people who can fully appreciate counseling ramifications.
Informed consent is an ethical and lawful code which requires the school counselors to reveal the clients alternatives to counseling, benefits and risks. Informed consent is usually given by the student clients parents and not the clients but they can agree to counseling with or without their parents consent. There are school principals and districts having policies that demand that before school counselors start any counseling sessions with the student clients, their parents must first be informed. Other policies require the counselors to inform parents only if the sessions have exceeded an exact number. According to Worzbyt, ORourke Dandeneau (2003), school counselors do not require parental permission before starting counseling sessions with clients not unless there is a federal or state law or school policy that is contrary to the same. Ethical scholars claim that counselors get parents informed consent and minor clients assent they expect that counseling would involve several sessions.
The rights to privacy demands that the counselor should not disclose information about the minor clients fantasies, feelings, beliefs, thoughts, mind and body. School counselors have always had problems regarding parents legal rights and students ethical rights. Studies show that the conflicting ethical and legal obligations are often confusing even for the school counselors. The dilemma comes from school counselors taking things to be ethical then they come to the realization that the same issues have a connection with legal responsibilities. Although people can cite the source of the dilemma, there has not been a satisfactory resolution. Minors have rights to confidentiality but no rights to privacy as far as their parents are concerned. Minors parents on the other hand have the legal rights to take part in planning for counseling services. They also have the right to manage such services apart from the cases which have limited exceptions.
The school counselors are held accountable for the decisions they make regarding their clients right to privacy. If they are supposed to have involved the clients parents then they fail to and the student does things with negative repercussions, the counselor would be held accountable for failing to do so. If they fail to consult other professionals and colleagues about a certain case then they make a decision which makes the client worse off than they were before counseling began, they would be held accountable. When they reveal a clients information to a party they are not supposed to and then this information make the said client worse, they are held accountable. This means that accountability for school counselors mainly lie in the decisions they make regarding the clients condition and the parties they involve. To be on the safe side, school counselors should make such decisions by following the code of ethics in their profession and consulting from their colleagues and other professionals.
Conclusion
Adolescents and children are very delicate as far as counseling is concerned. Most of them can live with an issue for a very long time without seeking for help especially if they are not very close with their parents. When the condition becomes unbearable, many result to solitude since they usually feel like nobody cares about them. In most cases, it is the parents who notice that there is something wrong with their childrens behavior and therefore seeks to know what the problem could be. If the child does not trust the parents with their problems, chances are high that they would not disclose the problem to them. Most parents then take such children to the school counselors to find out what could be wrong with their children. The way the school counselor approaches the issue can make the student to gain trust in the counselor. Most counselors penetrate the shell that children create when they are unable to handle an issue. However, it becomes the greatest kind of betrayal when the student realizes that the only person they had trusted has revealed their information. This can result into worse conditions in the students including failure to ever trust any one. It is therefore the responsibility of school counselors to ensure that they observe the right to privacy and confidentiality of the student clients information. When they are establishing the counseling relationship, they should let the students know all that pertains to counseling and especially the situation which would require them to reveal the private information of their clients. This would make the students to make informed choices regarding counseling.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment