Legal issues in Social Work, Counseling, and Mental Health presents clearly and comprehensively what mental health and other direct practice professionals need to know to respond to the legal issues that surround practice. This volume covers a wide range of topics including providing testimony, responding to subpoenas, dealing with an attorney, influencing the legal system, and understanding the legal side of the business of psychotherapy. The author also discusses various direct practice and human service issues, incorporating some of the everyday legal questions these professionals encounter and using case material.

This highly practical text surveys the myriad legal and ethical issues that social workers encounter both in daily practice and under special circumstances. Its initial section presents concepts in law and ethics that unite practitioners, researchers, and academics in the field, such as confidentiality, informed consent, and the interplay between social work and administrative and judicial systems. A selection of representative cases illustrates legal aspects involved in providing services to families, children, elders, and persons with disabilities. Also included are chapters on advocacy in social work, both in its potential to influence policy and on the global stage as part of the ongoing struggle for human rights and dignity. Among the topics covered: Confidentiality and the social worker-client relationship Liability issues for social workers in the clinical context Legal issues arising in the context of social work research The social worker and forensic social work Social worker involvement in access to school and school services Social work in the context of health care Legal issues working with immigrants, refugees, and asylees The interface between social work and human rights Legal Issues in Social Work Practice and Research is an interdisciplinary text aimed at social work, mental health, and legal professionals. It enhances the power of social work as an integrative system to support clients’ rights and agency.

Risk Management in the Behavioral Health Professions is a comprehensive handbook for mental health and social service providers on prevention of malpractice lawsuits and licensing-board complaints. Frederic G. Reamer draws on his extensive firsthand experience as an expert witness in litigation and licensing-board cases throughout the United States to give readers an insider’s view of practical risk-management strategies. He provides in-depth discussion of common risk areas and steps practitioners can take to protect clients and themselves. Key topics include confidentiality and privileged communication; service delivery, including informed consent, assessment, boundary issues, suicide risk management, and use of technology; impaired practitioners; supervision and consultation; documentation; deception and fraud; and interruption and termination of services. Reamer offers pragmatic advice about how to respond to a lawsuit or licensing-board complaint. He emphasizes the challenges and risks related to remote service provision, especially during public health crises and pandemics. The book includes sample risk-management forms and templates as well as extensive case examples that illustrate fundamental risk-management concepts. Designed for behavioral health professionals including social workers, psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychiatrists, and substance use disorder treatment counselors, this book is an indispensable resource on how to navigate challenging ethics and risk-management issues.

Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare, Volume 1: The Profession of Social Work features contributions from leading international researchers and practitioners and presents the most comprehensive, in-depth source of information on the field of social work and social welfare.

Mental health practitioners often overlook initial stabilization strategies and interventions when providing evidence-informed approaches in order to get to the so-called “important” or “interesting” part of treatment. For many mental health practitioners, the “important” or “interesting” component of treatment includes insight and therapeutic processing work. Some mental health practitioners are not implementing vital stabilization strategies before entering the so-called deeper components of therapeutic interventions. Proponents of a stabilization approach maintain that a level of stabilization, prior to therapeutic insight or processing-based interventions, increases the likelihood of an individual benefiting from therapeutic processing, exposure, and insight-based work. Further, individuals who have achieved a level of stabilization prior to therapeutic insight or processing-based interventions have been identified as being less likely to drop out of treatment. Stabilization Approaches That Empower Clients Through Mental Health Crises is a critical reference source that educates mental health practitioners in a range of trauma-informed approaches and resources that promote stabilization, provides a guide for the practical application of stabilization-based therapy, and offers insights into stabilization as it is applied across a variety of therapeutic approaches. Providing readers with explanations of key concepts, strategies to overcome barriers in the safe application of a range of therapeutic techniques, and resources that can be used across a variety of treatment settings and clinical diagnoses, this book is ideal for psychiatrists, counselors, psychologists, clinical social workers, mental health professionals, researchers, academicians, and students who seek to provide a safer therapeutic intervention when providing evidence-informed mental health care.

How does one make the right choices when faced with ethical dilemmas? Social service professionals use a unique set of principles to guide their decisions within a broad and complex array of situations. Straight Talk about Professional Ethics, Second Edition provides readers with the guidelines that will help them make decisions in a manner that is clinically and ethically effective. This book explains the seven core concepts that guide ethical practice in the helping professions: self-determination, informed consent, competence, confidentiality and privacy, attention to conflicts of interest, maintenance of professional boundaries, and professionalism and integrity. Developing a commitment to the ethics of a profession and an understanding of how those ethics apply to commonly occurring workplace situations is a major element of professional preparation.

The authors have assembled some of the finest minds in the field of supervision studies to produce Supervision as Collaboration in the Human Services. Key aspects of a learning organization and the process of organizational learning are explored across the various human services (social, mental health, health, and aging), making this an essential core text for graduate and undergraduate students of social work and counselling, as well as for human services supervisors and practitioners.

I. OVERVIEW Legal Issues in Mental HeaIth Care is aimed at the mental health clinician who provides services on either an inpatient or an outpatient basis. It is written for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and other therapists to help them understand and manage legal issues in their daily practice. The issues covered apply to therapists who work for an agency or hospital as weil as those who work independently. The book is meant to serve as a handbook, but it also provides a quick resource as legal questions arise which are related to the obligations of the therapist. It ad dresses the legal issues that confront the clinician. It is not aimed at the clinicianwho specializes in forensie mental health issues, because the information provided does not reach that level of detail or sophistication. Nor is it aimed at the scholar, because our goal is to provide practical information in a clear and concise format. Wehave not addressed the wide array of laws protecting the mentally disabled from discrirnina tion-most notably, the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)and the Fair Housing Act. Most states also have laws that prohibit discrimination in employment, services, and housing. These issues are beyond the scope of this book because we are address ing the legal issues that arise in providing care, rather than the rights of mentally disabled persons. 11. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK The book consists of eleven chapters and a Glossary of Legal Terms.

Updated to include the new ACA Code of Ethics, this comprehensive volume from two leaing scholars offers an in-depth examination of professional issues in counseling from both an ethical "and "legal point of view. Difficult issues are address in a straightforward manner, and practical, realistic advice is proffered through vignettes that showcae typical situations and dilemmas faced by practicing counselors. Unique in-depth coverage of legal issues as well as ethics. The only text written by both a lawyer and an expert in ethics, all issues in the text are examined from both a legal and an ethical perspective. [See pages 78, 96-108, 116, and 121-122 for a few examples of the book's coverage of the law.] Integrated coverage of the ethical and legal issues involved in working with diverse clients. The text contains a separate multicultural chapter [Chapter 3] as well as integrated coverage of diversity in every chapter. [See the detailed table of contents for the "Diversity Considerations" section in each chapter.] Accompanying video vignettes. An interactive CD-Rom containing twenty video cases that present realistic counseling challenges involving a variety of clients in numerous and varied settings can be ordered as an adjunct to the text. The CD scaffolds users in the analysis of each of these ethcial dilemmas and then provides the user with feedback to their analysis. Gives prospective counselors a bona fide feel for the actual counseling session--facilitates students' reflection and provides practice in ethical decision making.

Ethical and Legal Issues in Counseling Children and Adolescents provides counselors and other professionals with clinical cases and accurate, up-to-date information on both ethical standards and case law. Chapters take a comprehensive, developmental approach to legal and ethical decision making when counseling children and adolescents, one that presents each chapter topic from the perspective of an adult and then explores accommodations important to children and adolescents. The book is a vital resource for faculty who recognize the limited scope with which other texts cover the topic and for practitioners looking to better understand the legal and ethical concerns around working with young people.