Legal Issues Across Counselling & Psychotherapy Settings: A Guide for Practice
About this ebook
Helping practitioners move between different practice settings, the book explores how the legal framework within which they work varies across contexts. It introduces practitioners to the statutory structure and obligations of different types of counselling and psychotherapy services, setting out implications for practice such as liability and accountability. Work settings covered include:
o Private practice
o Commercial organisations - Employee Assistance Programmes
o Voluntary sector
o Government Health settings (NHS): primary and secondary
o Private Health settings: primary and secondary
o Education / Schools /FE/HE
o Social services
o Police and Home Office
For each setting, the book considers the statutory basis, how the legal framework impacts on services to clients, systemic issues such as bullying or prejudicial discrimination, responsibility for decision making, and the restrictions and empowerment of therapists and clients within the context of that setting.
This book is an essential reference for counselling practitioners working across a range of practice settings, including those with portfolio careers. It is also important reading for all those studying counselling, psychotherapy or clinical psychology.
About the author
Dr Barbara Mitchels, is a practising psychotherapist and a Fellow of BACP. A retired solicitor, Barbara, combines the professions of law and therapy in CPD workshops, providing a specialist consultancy service for counselling professionals and the BACP and contributions to the BACP’s Good Practice in Action Legal Guidance series. She led the writing of the Ethical Guidelines for Research in the Counselling Professions (BACP 2018a), and other recent publications include Children and Vulnerable Witnesses in Court: A Practice Handbook (Wiley, Simmonds and Hill 2018).
Tim Bond is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Bristol and Visiting Professor to the University of Malta. He has a longstanding commitment to researching and writing about professional ethics for the talking therapies and promoting mental well-being. He is currently a consultant to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy on professional ethics and standards, a member of the Ethics Committee for the British Psychological Society and the Executive Council of the International Association for Counselling. He is a registered member of BACP and provides counselling supervision and training workshops.
