ETHICAL FRAMEWORK, LIMITS OF PROFICIENCY AND THE LIMITATIONS ON COUNSELLORS COMPARED TO OTHER PROFESSIONS THAT USE COUNSELLING SKILLS.

The Ethical Framework is made up of rules and regulations within which Counsellors and Psychotherapists strive to achieve in order to attain a high professional standard. It protects client and counsellor and compounds values, principles and personal moral qualities for counsellors to work alongside in order to achieve the highest standard of counselling for clients. These include safety, record keeping, confidentiality and issues such as prejudice, transference.

It also requires that at the start of every new counselling relationship a clear contract is set up between the counsellor and the client.
Another example is the dual roles of the police force which may cause conflicts in areas such as confidentiality, because even though using counselling skills may help the police perform their duties more successfully, their primary responsibility is to uphold the law.

The BACPS’s Ethical Framework allows conformity to ensure that counsellors work to high standards. It provides protection to both the client and the counsellor by providing a mechanism for client’s complaints and ensures that complaints are dealt with under the “Heads of Complaint” of professional misconduct and professional malpractice.

On reading through the Ethical Framework a few times and comparing what we do as trainee counsellors in our studies, triad sessions and supervision, I realise that with each session we have we put the requirements of the BACP Ethical Framework into practise, preparing ourselves and familiarising ourselves with the ethics of the framework for work in the near future. At this present time in our training we are limited in what we can offer to the client and we should always make this very clear to the client so they are not misled as to the level of service we are able to and can provide. As a trainee counsellor I have learnt and continue learn and familiarise myself with various agencies this will allow me to signpost clients on depending on what they bring. A counsellor must