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Ethical Consultation: Can We Provide All Things to All Clients? Should We?

Previously Recorded
Alan M. Singer, PhD, LMSW
$39.99 Cost For Member: $29.99

Should clinicians be role models for ethical behavior for their clients? This seminar will describe for therapists, how to serve as ethical consultants, who will help their clients balance their personal needs with their sense of responsibility to others. Dr. William Doherty, University of Minnesota, has introduced this cutting edge concept of the ethical consultation. Each of us clinicians should step up in the role of an ethical consultant. But, has Doherty turned a staple of sound therapeutic practice on its head?

In school, most of us were taught that our sole responsibility in therapy is to the person in front of us at our desk. Along comes ethical consultation to challenge that principle and posit that we are always affecting people who are in the client's life but not in the room with us. Should we be responsible for our clients’ entire family system? Until now, we likely considered them as “not our responsibility.” Dr. Singer will challenge seminar participants to attempt to fix not only their clients lives but minimally, to display empathy and suggest clinical interventions for members of their clients’ families. Featured in the webinar’s two interactive roleplays and panel discussion will be Dr. Dovid Fox, Ms. Miriam Turk, LCSW and Mrs. Rozi Wax, LMHC, LMFT.

About the Presenter

Dr. Alan Singer has been a family therapist in New Jersey and New York since 1980. He has a high success rate in saving marriages of couples on the brink of divorce. He serves as an Adjunct Professor for the Touro University Graduate School of Social Work and Director of Jewish Communal Outreach for the Men’s Division. He coordinates reconciliation for family estrangement, is a Certified Discernment Counselor, and serves on the U.S. Registry of Marriage-Friendly Therapists. He is a recovery specialist for the Beyond Affairs Network. He counsels via Zoom, blogs at FamilyThinking.com, and is the author of Creating Your Perfect Family Size (Wiley). His mantra: I’ll be the last person in the room to give up on your marriage. Married forty-five years, he and his wife are the parents of four grown children. He was a presenter at the NEFESH International Conferences of 2018, 2019, and 2022 and the first NARME conference. His essays are featured in AISH.com, Jerusalem Post, and the Central New Jersey Home News Tribune. He can be reached at dralansinger@gmail.com or (732) 572-2707

Learning Objectives:

  1. define and describe the term ethical consultation. Explain the clinician’s potential new role as an ethical consultant. Enable seminar participants to experience ethical consultation first-hand via interactive role plays and experiential exercises.
  2. demonstrate the value of ethical consultation by using ten examples of actual client sessions on critical issues such as: post-partum depression, infidelity, estrangement/cutoffs, and clinicians serving as marital role models to our clients.
  3. challenge workshop participants to consider a new level of responsibility to our clients. We are always affecting people who are in our clients’ lives but not in the room with us. Traditionally we likely viewed them as: not our responsibility. Determine if we clinicians should be responsible to some degree for our clients’ entire family system.

Agenda:

Ethical Consultation: This seminar will show therapists how to serve as ethical consultants, who help clients balance their personal needs with their sense of responsibility to others.

 

Description of Ethical Consultation                                        5 minutes

The NASW Ethics hotline. Don't leave home without it             10 minutes

Moral Foundations Theory: Haidt and Joseph                           5 minutes

 

Technique for Ethical Consultation LEAP-C; the basic skills    5 minutes

Listen 

Explore 

Affirm

Perspective 

Challenge      Therapist: “I am concerned that you might be ending your marriage without seeing whether it could become healthy again through a high-quality round of couples’ therapy.”

 

Who is my client; my primary concern?

Old School: only the person who sits at my desk in my office. My client is my primary concern.

New School: What is my frame of mind for other members of his/her family system?

  1. Obligated to try to help them
  2. Some Responsibility
  3. Not my problem

 Ten Examples of Ethical Consultation in Practice:

FORMAT:
First: The Set Up is a 3-4 sentence description that ends with a question to
the audience
Second: Polling of audience for choice A, B, or C
Third: Read the end of the vignette…the actual response or decision
Fourth: Audience discussion

Example 1 When Little White Lies Become Big Ones
Example 2 Is Divorce Effective as an Anti-Depressant?
Example 3 Postpartum Depression: Does the Husband Have a Role to Play?
Example 4: My Mom is in Hospice: The Respectful Goodbye

Example 5 Estrangement: One Third of Americans Have Ceased All
Contact with a Family Member

Example 6    Help Thy Neighbor’s Marriage as Thyself

Example 7 When a Stranger Sends the Therapist Incriminating Information
about a Client
Example 8 Getting Beyond the Affair as the Therapist Urges: Let Go of
Your Failed Marriage
Example 9 Should a Therapist Feel Responsible to Question the Unfair
Treatment of a Hated Ex-spouse?
Example 10 When Your Client Asks for Less Frequent Sessions

Time for the 10 Examples:                                                 50 minutes

 

 Role Play:                                                                       20 minutes
Roleplay actors/panelists include Nefesh Leadership: R. Dr. Dovid Fox, Mrs. Rozi
Wax, LMHC, LMFT and Ms. Miriam Turk, LCSW.

Audience Question and Answer session                              15 minutes

Summary and Conclusion                                                 10 minutes 

The principal argument of this seminar is that psychotherapy is truncated if it ignores the ethical dimension of our clients’ lives. We clinicians are midwives for relational deaths and rebirths, the shattering and rebuilding of committed intimate relationships that are at the heart of the human experience.

 

TOTAL TIME                                                                  120 minutes

 

 

This workshop offers 2 Continuing Education Credits
This webinar is recorded and will not grant live credits.

This presentation is open to:
  • Social Workers
  • Professional Counselors
  • Therapists
  • Psychologists
  • Licensed Mental Health Practitioners
  • Medical Doctors and Other Health Professionals
  • Other professionals interacting with populations engaged in mental health based services
Course Level: intermediate
Level of Clinician: intermediate
  • New practitioners who wish to gain enhanced insight surrounding the topic
  • Experienced practitioners who seek to increase and expand fundamental knowledge surrounding the subject matter
  • Advanced practitioners seeking to review concepts and reinforce practice skills and/or access additional consultation
  • Managers seeking to broaden micro and/or macro perspectives

Participants will receive their certificate electronically upon completion of the webinar and course evaluation form.

Disability Access - If you require ADA accommodations, please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification. Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often, and while we attempt to stay abreast of their most recent changes, if you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling. The grievance policy for trainings provided by NEFESH INTERNATIONAL is available here Satisfactory Completion Participants must have paid the tuition fee, logged in and out each day, attended the entire workshop, and completed an evaluation to receive a certificate (If this is a pre-recorded program, a post-test with a passing grade of 80% to receive a certificate.) Failure to log in or out will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates are available after satisfactory course completion by clicking here.
There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.
  • NEFESH International is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0046
  • NEFESH International is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Mental Health Counselor #MHC-0082
  • NEFESH International is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0048.
  • CE You! is an approved sponsor of the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners for continuing education credits for licensed social workers in Maryland.
    CE You! maintains responsibility for this program.
  • Therapist Express is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0275.
Refund Policy:
Full Refund until 48 hours before scheduled date.
48 hours before: full refund less $5.00 processing fee. After event no refund will be given.
*exclusions apply for reasonable need and cause.