Professional Ethics: Not for the Faint of Heart

Judy C. Roberts, MA, LMHC

About the workshop

This Workshop meets the Ethics and Law Requirement.

Whether or not it is a reasonable expectation, today's mental health clinicians are expected to conduct themselves scrupulously at all times, carefully balancing inherent conflicts of interest, side-stepping the pitfalls of unavoidable dual relationships, and all the while maintaining a healthy, well-balanced personal life.

Yeah, right.

This workshop is intended to be an intensive review of the information you should know to better equip yourself in your attempt to live up to that high standard.

You will be provided with a list of the most common sections of Washington State law that affect the routine practice of mental health clinicians, and be given resources to access other sections of law if necessary.
Rather than try to memorize all the guidance contained in various professional ethics codes, we will examine the specific values and principles that underlie ALL professional ethics codes. Conducting your professional self with these values and principles in mind can serve the clinician as an overall compass in keeping with the spirit of our ethics code.
And finally, you will be presented with a basic ethical decision-making model that when used will not only provide you with an accepted method of arriving at an ethical decision in a given situation, but will also serve as evidence (should your judgment be challenged), that you conducted yourself as a professional. You will have an opportunity to practice the use of this model in small group exercises using case examples that have been taken from the real world of clinicians.

About the presenter

Judy C. Roberts, MA, LMHC , received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Seattle Pacific College in 1968, and a Masters of Arts in Education (counseling) from Seattle University in 1989. She began her private practice in 1989 and currently works full time in her Seattle practice seeing individual adults, couples, & older adolescents.

She has served as the ethics chair for both Seattle Counselors Association and the Washington Mental Health Counselors Association since 1992, and was a founding board member of the Washington State Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, the Pro-bono Therapy Network for Sexual Abuse Survivors, and the Puget Sound Group Psychotherapy Network.

Since 1992, Ms Roberts has been teaching professional ethics & legal issues as an adjunct faculty member at Antioch University’s graduate psychology program in Seattle, and for the past nine years has conducted many continuing education workshops and in-service trainings for mental health clinicians in Washington State.

About the particulars

Location: Quality Inn, Oakwood 7919 N. Division-Spokane 99208 509.467.4900
When: April 25th, 2008
Hours: 9:00am-4:30pm
Fee: $125.00 US
CEU info: 6 CEUs Cascadia Training is approved by the NASW, Washington State Chapter, to provide continuing education units to Licensed Social Workers, Mental Health Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists. Certificates of Completion are awarded to attendees at the end of each workshop. Provider number #1975-118, and is an OSPI approved provider of in-service education. This is a "Washington State Approved Clock Hour Offering Workshop."