ETHICAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Legal and Ethical Responsibilities in Counselling Practice

Legal and Ethical Responsibilities in Counselling Practice

Introduction

Ethics are norms, customs and values of an individual or any society. It includes the responsibility of the society as well as individuals to follow such code of conducts in their lives which makes the society better and which differentiates humans with the animals. Ethics includes moral values of the society and individual that helps them to judge what is right and what is wrong, what is beneficial for them or society and what is not beneficial for the society. Ethics are everywhere in our personal and professional life. Professional ethics are always different according to the different fields of professions.

Ethics in counselling practice provides ethical guidelines to the counsellors about how to guide and help individuals in selecting their professional careers. Counsellors can make ethical counselling if they follow proper guidelines and principles given by the state or experts. Over the past 20 years, ethics in counselling is getting a standard to deal with the individuals which increases the efficiency of the counsellors. Today, most of the clients prefer to avail counselling service through advance technology (internet) and this might includes a chance of fraud. To overcome these frauds, professional counsellors seeks a potential to improve in ethics counselling.

Discussion

Today, ethics in one's individual life is very important. Ethics satisfy's the basic human needs through honesty and hard working. It helps in developing a standard society where people know what is right and what is wrong and what are the rights of the individual and the society as a whole. It also helps in commercial activities of the organizations, where organizations can maintain a long term relations with their employees by taking care of them. Secondly, organizations focused on corporate social responsibility to work for the society, which is indirectly related to ethics. The importance of career counselling is very vast, as it helps in informing different career professions to the individuals, aware them about professions which are currently highly demanded in the job market and which profession will be demanded in the near future. Also they help individuals in selecting their degree, courses and universities which can make their careers successful.

A professional in counselling industry operates their businesses by maintaining the information confidential of each and every client. They ask each client about their background, their education, interests, in which field they are interested and what priorities they have in their lives. Therefore, counselling business can only be done by professional experts who can observe each and every client easily and can advise them accordingly. The ethical standards and codes of every country are developed by their own counselling association such as, Australian Counselling Association Inc., Hong Kong Professional Counselling Association and American Physiological Association. These associations provide an ethical framework to the counsellors in which they will perform their duties and work in their boundary which is given by their respective associations. There are some general ethics which is followed by every country's ...