ACA Code of Ethics, Court mandated disclosure of client information.

How well do you know your clinical ethics codes when hauled into court?

The ACA code of ethics reads:

B.2.d. Court-Ordered Disclosure

When ordered by a court to release confidential or privileged information without a client’s permission, counselors seek to obtain written, informed consent from the client or take steps to prohibit the disclosure or have it limited as narrowly as possible because of potential harm to the client or counseling relationship.

What does this mean?

Well even though courts will try to get you to testify to what is shared with you in session, you can not be coerced into doing that, with a few exceptions of course. The judge can mandate you testify and you will have to bring all of your paperwork with you. By the way, for those of us that still handwrite those notes, the judge has to be able to read them. Plain English and good handwriting. Also, the client can give you written permission to share with the court and you are within your ethics codes to share just the information they want you to share.

Many years ago now, I had a client that did not want me to share their information with the court because they were being harassed by DHS due to differences in cultural beliefs about raising their children. I was ordered by the court to show up. I did and I testified.

Due to the ethics codes and my client’s resistance to sharing her information, I was very vague and only shared what I absolutely had to. Turns out the DHS caseworker had testified that this therapist had given her damaging information in a phone conversation that was absolutely not true.

Years later I received feedback from a colleague that had been at that session. They congratulated me on standing up for my code of ethics, and my client rather than crumble to unreasonable requests.

It is difficult for some professionals outside of the counseling profession to understand why our ethics are so important. We have to protect our clients the best we can. Often our clients have no one else to advocate for them.

If we can not be a safe deposit of sensitive information, What can they do?

It is also very important that we document all of the information that is necessary to support our clients with good clinical outcomes and protect ourselves from intentional or unintentional differences of opinion on what is shared in our work.

Clear, concise, and appropriate documentation is so very important.

It protects everyone involved.

Namaste’