Attitudes And Beliefs Revisited. The American Counseling

The American Counseling Association and the American Mental Health Counselors Association Codes of Ethics both provide guidance and direction in making ethical decisions for their members (ACA, 2005) (AMHCA, 2010). Both the ACA and the AMHCA Codes of Ethics cover a wide range of moral and ethical situations that could present themselves to mental health professionals. Both of these codes of ethics have significant impacts on the counseling profession. The tools provided by these codes of ethics ensure that mental health professionals are able to conform to the regulations set forth. They address common concerns from varying points of view. Understanding these codes of ethics is essential to all mental

By being able to identify my own values and beliefs is an important aspect of my continual personal growth. I use them to guide my actions and behaviours throughout my life as well as helping form attitudes towards different things. Some are rally core to me and they define who I am, whilst others change in importance dependant on my needs at any given time.

Religion plays an important role in the lives of many people, and in such cases, religious principles and beliefs influence all aspects of their lives. With the increasing interest in spirituality in the community, the intersection of psychological services, religion and spirituality is likely to be a growth area in psychology (Plante, 2007). However, working with clients around religion and spirituality issues does present potential ethical challenges.

In conclusion, the augment for gay adoption is far stronger and far better supported than those opposed. One must admit that sexual orientation is fundamentally irrelevant to a person’s capacity to be a good parent. The opposition to gay and lesbian adoption has failed to support its

Other important changes to the newest ACA Code of Ethics is not allowing personal values and religious beliefs to interfere with the work counselors do. This includes not making referrals on the basis of the counselor’s religious beliefs. Instead, the counselor needs to educate themselves in order to provide services for a variety of clients before making a referral. These updated codes work to improve client-counselor relationships and uphold the standard for professional counselors

The 2014 ACA Code of Ethics provides structure that protects clients. Responsibilities that counselors to be aware of is avoid imposing their own values, attitudes and beliefs on clients (Ethics, 2014). Developing a relationship with clients requires providing counseling in a culturally sensitive manner (Ethics, 2014). Counselors respect the diversity of clients take measures to ensure that they are not of risk of imposing their values onto clients (Ethics, 2014).

These publications regarding ethics, American Counseling Association: Code of Ethics (2005) and the American Association of Christian Counseling: Code of Ethics (2004), are available as a reference for use. The purpose of this paper is to compare general and specific elements of the two publications. There are two areas of general exploration: 1) relation to their format for retrieval of specific data, 2) their value or standards basis, if any, from which the publications are written. More specifically three specific areas will be compared. First, the area of informed consent as it relates to the client and the counselor. Second, codes relating to

This paper is a comparison between the codes of ethics of the American Counseling Association (ACA) and the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC). This paper aims to present the similarities and differences between the two codes of ethics. There are two main sections on this paper. The first section presents the general similarities and differences of the two codes of ethics. The second section presents the similarities and differences of the two codes of ethics on three specific areas: Confidentiality, Sexual Intimacies and Informed Consent. The author used the codes of ethics of both organizations in the process of comparing and contrasting. The general comparison reveals that the

Unfortunately for this counselor, her religious beliefs cost her employment with the agency. According to the facts of the case presented in the excerpt from Corey, Corey, and Callanan (2007), “a court case involving a therapist’s refusal to counsel homosexual clients” (pp. 138-141), Bruff should be held liable for any emotional harm she caused to the client. As set forth in the National Association of Social Workers, Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers, (2008), social workers are ethically required to help people in need and address any social setbacks or problems.

“The failure to acknowledge or address religious and spiritual issues in the training environment could result in an atmosphere that feels unsafe or invalidating for students with strong religious or spiritual identities” (Berkel, Constantine and Olson, 2007, p. 6). Students reported using spirituality in therapy with clients to help their client improve and use spiritual language in sessions. According to Berkel, Constantine and Olson (2007), clinical supervisors need to develop competence in religious and spiritual issues. Supervisors can accomplish this by becoming aware of their own spiritual and religious values and beliefs, seek continuing education to increase spiritual and religious skills, education and awareness, address the potential influence of spirituality and religion on the counseling relationship, utilize community resources, “need for support, cultural relevance and exposure”, and promote and start religious and spiritual discussions (p. 8-12). Cultural competence in supervision needs to include spirituality and religion to better serve clients and be able to address any issues during sessions about spirituality or

Many states laws deny children in foster care, healthy, loving homes simply because of a potential parent’s sexual orientation (Gray, 2006), The catholic church as well as other organization’s oppose gay adoption based upon religious teachings, while others debate the legality of it (Gray, 2006). In today’s society, many children grow up to be emotionally stable and successful whether they have a heterosexual couple as parents or a same sex couple as parents. Gay parent adoptions are an equal right, as they are becoming more mainstream and are as equally stable as heterosexual adoptions.

Adoption has been around for a long time, however only recently has the topic of gay adoption risen. There are many fostered children on the planet, yet not enough families or guardians to take them in. There aren't that many families who can and will adopt children, regardless of whether this is on account of they can't assist them, they have offspring of their own, or they simply don't want kids. The final product is as yet an excess of stranded children needing an adoring family. There is an answer for this issue. LGBT adoption. There is a rising measure of openly gay couples all around and many of those couples would love to have children, however, it's as yet still illegal for gay couples to adopt children in a few regions of the U.S.,

In an attempt to adopt a child and change a child’s life, they are often seen as incompetent parents and are unrightfully discriminated. Some of the concerns they have towards gay and lesbian parents are: their physical appearance, social skills, social adjustments, maturity, shared interest in a child, and whether he/she are the primary caretaker. These additional factors are considered and may be unsupported assumptions. However it could be an unfavorable effect toward his/her potential gain of custody.

In the United States, every child has the right to develop healthily, and with the ever growing number of kids without a family to look after them, they deserve to receive a warm welcome by whoever would accept them as their own. Foster care children in particular already struggle greatly due to loss and trauma. In more awful circumstances, vast amounts of youth will age out of the foster care system and fall into the risk of becoming jobless or homeless. This information in mind should be enough to make changes accordingly in order to prevent such consequences. The thousands of children waiting to be adopted have raised an argument among the public about whether same-sex couples should have the same adoption rights as straight couples. Progressive change has already been achieved with the legalization of same-sex adoption throughout all 50 states, but many still oppose the ruling and restrictions exist in some areas when it comes to fostering. For this nation to truly stand for social equality and provide for its youth, a parent’s sexuality should not have be a determining factor in the adoption process.

Children don’t choose their parents when they are born and for those who are adopted they often don't have a choice at such a young age who their parents are either. These children can only hope for loving parents no matter what race, sexuality or marital status. With knowing this, LGBT couples’ rights when adopting children are still questioned. Even though abuse and divorce, which can negatively affect a child's mental state, are possibilities in any relationship no matter what sexuality. For most cases adopted children live happy lives and having gay parents is normal to them. Still, the rights of LGBT couples being able to adopt children has been debated recently with some saying these couples should not be allowed to adopt at all, and others saying that LGBT couples should have the same rights as straight couples when adopting children. A third side to this debate is that too many children are in foster care and it should be encouraged for every couple to adopt a child if they can.