197 ACA Code of Ethics 2026 Updates With Dr. Bret Hendricks Ed.D, LPC-S

The ACA Code of Ethics is being rewritten, and if you supervise, teach, manage clinicians, or practice counseling, these changes affect you directly.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Bret Hendricks, who served on the ACA Ethics Code task force, to walk through the biggest proposed revisions and what they mean for counselors in real-world practice. We unpack how the profession is moving beyond impairment language into wellness and self-care accountability, why administrative supervision finally has its own ethical framework, and what supervisors need to clarify in their documentation and relationships.

We also spend time talking about something I know many supervisors struggle with: role confusion. Clinical supervision, administrative supervision, evaluation, mentorship, workplace expectations, these areas overlap constantly. Dr. Hendricks explains how the revised language pushes supervisors to define boundaries more clearly and revisit those conversations throughout the supervisory relationship.

Another major conversation centers around the new expectation for a professional will. Counselors are now being asked to think proactively about records access, continuity planning, and ethical responsibility if practice operations are interrupted.

This episode is not about fear or “gotcha” ethics. It is about building stronger systems, clearer communication, and healthier supervision structures that protect both clinicians and clients.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why counselor wellness is now part of ethical responsibility 
•  What a professional will is and why supervisors need one 
•  How administrative supervision differs from clinical supervision 
•  Why supervision role clarification matters more than ever 
•  What supervisees should expect from ethical supervision systems 

If you have ever felt uncertain about supervision boundaries, documentation expectations, or workplace ethics, this conversation will help you think more clearly about the systems supporting your practice.

Want to learn more? Check out this month’s free resource from Kate Walker Training.

If this episode raised questions about ethical supervision, documentation systems, or sustainable practice structures, join us inside the Step It Up Membership.

Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit. 

Transcript

Why Wellness Shapes Ethical Practice

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Wellness really does form a foundation for us as counselors to make ethical decisions. If we're not well, then we're unable really to function at a very high level to make high-level ethical decisions. And I am happy to say that I did not even make the initial suggestion for this on the committee, that we added a new code, C2F, which says that we monitor for our well-being.

Meet An ACA Ethics Code Writer

SPEAKER_01 0:53

The ACA Code of Ethics is getting its first rewrite since 2014, and I've got someone who helped write it. Dr. Brett Hendricks, LPC supervisor, Professor Emeritus, ethics expert, joins me today to walk us through the highlights. I'm Dr. Kate Walker. Let's get to work. Hey everyone, happy Thursday. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to our free webinar. My name is Dr. Kate Walker, and we do these uh to give you free C's, but also to give you incredibly great information. So without further ado, Dr. Hendrix, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself because I'm so excited that you're here. This is, I feel like this is like we're getting this insider look. So thank you. Thank you so much for doing this.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Well, I'm really glad to be here, Kate. So I am Dr. Brett Hendrix. Um, I am a uh LPC supervisor in the state of Texas. A little bit about my history. I have been involved with the counseling profession for a long time, enough that I am now a professor emeritus and retired. And I will tell you that retirement has been fabulous. I loved what I did. I just did too much of it. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about wellness this afternoon anyway. So really glad to be a part of this. Um, I just want to say that my history is that I have been part of doing ethics, uh writing ethics, writing about ethics, researching, speaking about ethics for as long as I've been in the profession. And I was the co-chair for the iteration of the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors Ethics Code. That's a lot. I had to breathe to say that. Um, for two iterations of that. Um, I've served on the ACA Ethics Committee. I've also served on the ACA Ethics Appeals Committee. And I just I feel like that just a little bit of personal stuff here. Throughout my career, I've been very, very fortunate to have been president of a couple of organizations, including Texas Counseling Association. Um, throughout my career, I've just felt it a privilege to be a part of a profession that is given the beautiful opportunity to be sort of self-governed.

How The Rewrite Process Works

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Uh, if you think about the process of our ethics code, we are in the process of writing it. And I'll just go through a little bit about that process. And by the way, just by way of introduction, I have worked in clinical settings, uh private practice for as long as I've been a counselor and also an administrator at a mental health agency, and then as a counselor educator. So uh so I've kind of made the rounds of different areas, different corners of the counseling profession. I've also done a lot in forensics. So just to let you know that this process for the re for the rewriting of the code really began in 2023, and there was a small committee that was formed to look at just what basically needed to be done to write the code, to rewrite the code. That committee made their suggestions, and then a task force, which is what I'm a part of, was appointed in 2025. There are 14 of us on the task force. I'm reading this because I want to make sure that I'm getting this correct, that our original mission was to rewrite the code, suggest guidelines, facilitator, uh facilitate stakeholder review, and also then finalize the draft documents and the guidelines. So we are basically at the point right now where we have finished, as of January 26th, we've finished our part thus far of writing. Now it's out for stakeholder review. And I'm gonna emphasize this throughout this discussion that this is a code that, yes, we wrote, it's your code. And so you need to give stakeholder review. You can do that by going to counseling or counselor.org, the ACA website, log in there. You have to create a little account. Um, it's easy to do. If I can do it, believe me, you can do it. And so let me just say, please give feedback. It is going out to well over what I understand, 200,000 folks who are members of the counseling profession, members of ACA, its divisions, its branches, but also to constituents. And so I'm gonna be very blunt about several things tonight. One, the first one I'm going to say is if there's something about the code that you don't like, did you give feedback on it? If you didn't, then and we are getting back together as a committee the first part of June, and we are going to go through every comment. And so just be aware, your comments are important, they are a part of this. And so please give that feedback. Um, I think that that website is open until April 24th. And so log on to counseling.org and it's on the cover page there. So, with that being said, there were 14 of us. I want to tell you how the sausage was made. There were 14 of us. We met once a month, and we've been meeting once a month since we formed in in 2025. So it's been a lot of meetings. And then out of the 14 on the committee, we each were members of at least two subcommittees, which basically took sections of the code and rewrote. The sections that I particularly worked on were section C, professional responsibility, and section S, supervision, training, and teaching, which is really relevant to Dr. Walker's work and to the podcast, I think. Also, section I, which is a brand new section. We are so excited about it, and it is about forensic practice. We've never had a section in the code on it before. And this is the first time in many, many, many ACA ethics codes that we actually added a section. So I'll talk a little bit about that later. I'm gonna just say what's staying the same in the code, because y'all all want to know what's

Cultural Sustaining Counseling And Client Welfare

SPEAKER_00 7:02

different. Well, I'll tell you what's staying the same is that the ACA Code of Ethics still is going to remain a guide for counselors. It's going to be a guide for people in the counseling profession with regard to students, supervisees, research participants, and consultees as well. It's also about maintaining our core professional values. A1A, welfare and dignity of the client. That forms the foundation of everything that we do. And so it is about those core professional values. In this iteration of the code, we reframed some language to be more positive in terms of what we do versus what we don't do. And I'm going to highlight a couple of things on those things as well, because the code can also be an education tool. And remember that many states use the ACA ethics code as their LPC code or their licensure code as well. So it's just important that we train the public as to what we do, also. So again, along those lines in the preamble, we do have a brief description of what we call virtue ethics that we contribute to defining the profession through the ethics code. We serve as the basis for inquiries and adjudication. Also serves, as I was saying, as a reference for state licensure boards as they investigate complaints. So again, I'm just going to run through some highlights when I get to the sections that I particularly worked on, then I'll get a little bit more in-depth. But I will just say that in section A, the counseling relationship, we worked to really make the language a lot more clear. And we added the term culturally sustaining in A2C, which if we think about what we're doing, what we're how we're working with our clients, cultural sustaining refers to that we go beyond just being aware of the client's culture to actually preserving and affirming their culture. So we were thinking about you move in and cultural awareness from competency to responsiveness. And then beyond responsiveness is sustaining. So that's really a foundational piece of the code of ethics is we want to do cultural sustaining work. So we believe that the cultural, that the client's cultural identity is an asset that they're bringing in. And so we work within that cultural identity. So I'm going to get a big one out of the way really fast.

Five-Year Rule And No Virtual Relationships

SPEAKER_00 9:40

And I will just say it's it people put a lot of emphasis on this when A4B about the emphasis of after five years, don't engage in sexual or romantic interactions with a client. We did keep the five years. However, the emphasis, and I want to be very clear about this, the emphasis from the committee is not about five years. The emphasis is about was there any kind of coercion? Was there any kind of anything that hurt the client in the process? And so that can be after five years. And so the five years is we discussed, it's also part of some states, including Texas codes. And so five years is, again, people say it's arbitrary. It's a number. But the point is that we do not ever, ever, ever want to cause an issue for a client. We always need to be aware of the power differential. We need to be aware of the impacts of those relationships. And so the emphasis is truly about was there anything exploitive or lie or cause harm to the room to the client even after five years? So we left that open for there to be adjudication. If there is a relation, a sexual relationship, romantic relationship, not just sexual, but a romantic relationship that has sexual components, of course. But if there's any harm to the client, that's the determining factor that we want people to see on that. Also, A4D, uh, no virtual relationships with current clients, including social media. We're just saying no. And I know that that's going to be a lot of uh, that's going to be some discussion. And so if you have feedback on that one, please go and give feedback. I do want to emphasize too that the the format of the code is going to be that we're going to have a it's going to be electronic in delivery to everyone. You can get a hard copy, you can download a hard copy of it, but it's going to be an electronic format with links from each one of the codes in the ethics code that is going to have a guideline or two or three for each ethics code. And so those guidelines are going to provide information about intent, about ways to really exercise doing the best, the most virtuous you can with that code. It's going to give, and I will say for supervision, um, I provided some examples about student interactions. And so I'll get to that in a little bit. But those those guidelines are going to be very valuable because, as we all know, with the 2014 code, things have changed. And so we need to look at the sustainability of the code. The guidelines are going to provide an easy way for us to uphold those standards and give more information about the standards without having to wait another 10 years for a revision.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

We do have a question in the chat. And if you have a professional page, the question is, you're so your client can't follow it then? Is that what the rules think about?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

That would be um the a social relationship, is what we're talking about with that. And so that would not be a social relationship. That would be a professional relationship is if it's with your professional page. What we're trying to avoid is the virtual social relationships that can occur. So that's what we're looking at there. And so I'm going to move, again, I'm going to move pretty fast through these,

Confidentiality Updates And The Professional Will

SPEAKER_00 13:23

if that's okay with y'all. That a lot of it stayed the same in section A. I'm going to go to section B on confidentiality and privacy. In section A, if it, you know, that old thing, if it's not broke, don't fix it. So there were things that were still very applicable there, but we're going to add guidelines to maybe give some things a little bit more up-to-date information on section A. On confidentiality and privacy, Section B, that section B6, it's a new, new, brand new code here. B6i, I believe, if I read my handwriting. Reasonable precautions. And this is not in the old code, this is in the new code. So are we looking at the new code? Yes. Reasonable precautions. That we established a professional will to address potential need for client access to records. This has been something that's kind of been batted around the profession for a long time. I know Dr. Bradley, we're at a Bradley and I presented on this 10 years ago and talked about the need for professional will. And really the components of the professional will and it's expanded on in some other areas, and we'll give a guideline on it as well. But it's who has access to your records, how those records can be disseminated, and that you provide that information in your informed consent. And so it doesn't necessarily we'll, again, we'll give examples on this, but basically it is how are you going to handle in the event of incapacitation, retirement, death, something happens where there's an interruption in your practice, or where you simply terminate the practice, then how do those clients get their records? Which has been an age-old question in the counseling profession. So now we're going to be having something in here about a professional will. And in that professional will, C2H, we'll talk about that in just a moment. Yeah, you can go ahead and thumb there. C2H. That it it's more specific here about the professional will, confidential transfer to identified colleague or records custodian in case of death, incapacitation, et cetera. So this needs to be in your informed consent. And people need to sign that they understand that you do have a professional will and that that professional will designates a person. And that person may change over time, but you need to be able to identify that person and how a client can get a hold of that person.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

I know I've been to some uh webinars with attorneys, and they don't necessarily like the term will, right? Because that implies like going into probate and some other things, right? So did y'all talk about that actual term will when you were coming up with that? Just we did.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

We did, Kate. And at the time that we talked about it, we had an attorney, two attorneys with us in the room. And then we also have the ACA attorney who has been looking over this. They had no objection to that term. And so that may come up though in the responses that we get. And so if you have a concern about that, or if anybody else does, let us know that. Because, and I will note this also, but really we want you all to make those comments. And that's a that's a valid question. I certainly agree with that, and I've heard that argument before. And so there may be better terminology, a better name for that document, but we just need to let people know how to get the records.

New Wellness Standard And Equity Language

SPEAKER_00 17:00

That's the point. Now, I want to say on professional responsibility, section C, which was a section I worked on. So on section C, professional responsibility, as I say, that C2H, uh we have professional will. You've already been there. Go to C2S. What we have in C2F and G, they kind of go together. For years, we've had the monitoring for impairment. That's pretty set. That we monitor ourselves, we have other people help us monitor. And I will just tell you that it was interesting because years ago I started, and Kate, you've probably heard me talk about this, that I talk a lot about wellness really does form a foundation for us as counselors to make ethical decisions. If we're not well, then we're unable really to function at a very high level to make high-level ethical decisions. And I am happy to say that I did not even make the initial suggestion for this on the committee, that we added a new code, C2F, which says that we monitor for our well-being and we identify personal strategies for creating and implementing self-care plans. And I cannot even tell you, I can't stand up and cheer right now, but I have stood up and cheered when we have presented this in other situations. I am so happy that we're not just looking at impairment, we're looking at wellness. And one of the things that we discussed was how do you monitor this? Well, you monitor this by making a self-care plan for yourself. Do it. How do you take care of yourself? And what plans do you have? And it's just in essence, you do as you choose to do on creating a self-care plan, but have something so that you have the ability to do and really do substantive self-care interventions for yourself, including consulting, including CEs, including other things that really do help you in your own decision making and your ethic, ethical awareness. So very, very important. I'm really proud of that C2F that we added. In C5 of the code, the non-discrimination section, we added a we added language there. It's on down. Yeah, C5. We added language there about counselors promote equity and fairness for all. And we figured that was a pretty succinct statement. I will also say it's in line with, I believe, with our Texas LPC code in terms of that we work with the clients and their cultural needs. And so what we're doing here is we're saying that we promote equity, which is also equity of, and I may be expounding too much on this, but equity of access to services, equity of our treatment, equity of how we approach things. So that is very much in the spirit of what we're doing with the code. We want to make sure that people are aware that we're looking at equity and fairness across the board. And this is not limited when we say for all, not limited to clients, students, colleagues, et cetera. This is saying equity and fairness for all, which includes society at large.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

We have a question. What would it take to allow providers to get CEs for attending their own therapy? Going back to the self-care question.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Well, I think that the self-care that would be part of making sure that you're abiding by, I mean, I'm not saying you have to do therapy as part of your self-care plan. I am saying that that could be part of your self-care plan. And I don't know that CEs would be given for that, but it would certainly be ethical practice. It could be encompassed under that. Again, you don't have to go to therapy, but if you are going to therapy, that certainly meets this code of self-care. It's a way to meet that. In section D, we're looking at professional relationships there.

Interdisciplinary Teams And Workplace Culture

SPEAKER_00 21:21

There was some language that changed, and I'm not mean to give you exact codes to go to on this, Dr. Walker. I'm just going to say that we changed this from the old title was relationships with other professionals. This section now, professional relationships, is really more closely aligned to how to work on a treatment team, on an interdisciplinary team, that we respect each other's perspectives, whether they are from counseling or from other mental health disciplines. Also, we have in D 18 very important. That we look at healthy workplace culture. We use some clarified language there on counselors alert their employers of inappropriate policies and practices. So we take action. It's one of those things of rather than you don't do, it's a positive that you take actions when there are things that are inappropriate. And so again, looking at respect underlying everything in Section D, that we do listen to other perspectives, that we help our clients through interdisciplinary teams and through also healthy workplace culture. Those things work together hand in hand.

Assessment Bias And Responsible Interpretation

SPEAKER_00 22:41

In section E on evaluation, assessment, and interpretation, we included language to make people more aware of, we hope, cultural sensitivity and very clearly articulated historical prejudice and diagnosis, and specifically among norming and groups. So how should instruments' results be interpreted? And looking at perhaps not interpreting them on making sure you know the psychometrics of the instrument, that you know what you're doing with that and how it was normed. Is it applicable to the culture with whom you're doing the assessment? So we also made sure that we kept the language and added to the language that we want to not pathologize certain groups or individuals and address biases in yourself as a counselor and others. And again, in the very broad sense, as a counselor, we have to address our biases, period. Whether that's at the micro level of is there something that prevents me from really working with the client because I know the client too well. They're in my community, I interact with them, or up to the macro level of cultural things. We all bring our cultural lens. It's a reality. And so we want to make sure that we're addressing and being proactive about addressing those. And the thing about bias, I know that we there's a lot of things floating around in the ethosphere about bias and self-bias and those sorts of things. It's something that we've always had as counselors that we've had ethics about, we have to control and be aware of our biases. So it's not adding to, it's simply continuing some of those very basic foundational things in the counseling profession. And we take reasonable steps to avoid that. We also in section E added language about making sure that we're taking reasonable steps to prevent others from misusing results as well. So moving to section F.

Supervision Overhaul For Admin Roles

SPEAKER_00 25:05

And I hope that I'm not, I again, I hate to, this is almost like the um if you're going on the European tour, if it's Tuesday, it's France. I mean, I know that we're hitting high-level things here, but to go over this in even an hour's time is a lot of material. It's a big ethics code. So I hope that this is okay to hit the high points and help help you all to refer back to looking at the feedback that you'll give us, hopefully, on the counseling.org website. So in Section F, we did some changes here. And I will tell you that those changes were done in response to the way that the counseling profession has changed. That we are looking at the application of supervision across settings. And we added very specific language there about administrative counseling, not administrative counseling, administrative as a discrete category, counseling as a category, clinical and educational roles. We didn't differentiate between those in the past. We kind of ran it all together. We did have things, obviously, on counselor education. We had things on students. We didn't have anything specifically on administrative supervision. And so we added, if we look at F7A, that begins that little area here, F7 and F7A, an administration under F7, that administrative supervision consists of management, program evaluation, efficient use of resources. We want to make sure that people are aware that if you're an administrator, you do have some ethics that are part of the code and that are addressing in many ways areas that administrators wanted us to address. And I'll I'll show y'all what I'm talking about here. So these are some of the things about being proactive. That F7A, that clinical and administrative supervisors define their roles and boundaries related to each area of supervision. They document and review those roles throughout supervision. How many times was, and again, I'm just saying, I'm speaking outside the committee here from my personal experience as an administrator at a mental health agency. How many times did those roles get confused in terms of is this clinical? Is this administrative? Is this wound up with some sort of other supervision thing? So what are your roles? And this is encouraging folks to really articulate those roles, not just once, because you can articulate them at the front. It's in the back end side of things that they get messy. You start getting into things where things cross over and you're not sure what your role is. So continued updating and documentation of what is your role in that in that facility.

Bonus Resource Break And Practice Audit

SPEAKER_01 28:14

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Supervision Hours, CEs, And Billing Clarity

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Kate, were you wanting to say something?

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, this is so wonderful. And it's interesting too because, you know, when I go to the leadership listening hours, I I hear, you know, how they're conceptualizing dual relationships, you know, in this situation, right? Supervisor to clinical, and I'm also your administrative supervisor. And is that, do we really have a common goal? And this is the first place I've ever seen it written down that we should have these common goals that are, or if we don't, we better specify it and say it out loud. So this is this is wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Oh, you're welcome. I will say there are some things that I'm super proud of in this code. This is one of them. These are some right here as a cluster. The next one, not as a bad cluster, it's a good cluster. 57B. And this is specifically for administrators. That if organizational practices conflict with the ACA code, you should take reasonable efforts to resolve the conflict and ensure client welfare and adherence to the code. We've had that in a general code. We have not had that very specifically for administrators. And, you know, people will come back and say, well, what's reasonable? Well, did you do something? Because we can't dictate in every administrative situation what a reasonable effort would be. But in your particular situation, did you do what you could and what was professionally appropriate to deal with these things? And so many times I think that administrators don't feel empowered to do those things. And we're hoping through this code, it gives them some feeling of empowerment. The ACA code is backing them on this. But wait, there's more. F7E is related to this also, that administrative supervisors advocate for resources to meet clinical and administrative supervision needs. I will tell you, after years of being an administrator and years of working with other administrators, that's been probably the number one frustration is that they feel like that they're always caught between the budget and what the client needs are. And in some situations, it's very, very difficult to meet the client needs because you ain't got the budget. And so we are hoping with this code again to give supervisors and administrative positions a sense of some empowerment to do something. It's in my code. It's in my code that I advocate for this. So we're hoping that that gives some empowerment there. And similarly, 57S, the supervisors make efforts to provide current and relevant CEs for supervisees. Now, I saw that, and we again felt very, very, very strongly about this, that it is incumbent upon an administrative supervisor, number one, to and and inherently, and this is Brett talking. I'm not talking for the committee now. I'm just saying I think in order to provide relevant CE, you have to know what's relevant. You have to be reading, you have to be aware of what's going on in the field, you have to know what your folks are needing, what they're really wanting and needing. And so this is one that, again, is not, we're hoping it's it's not a gotcha code, but we're hoping it's one of those empowerment areas that gives people the ability to ask for, based on the ethics code, the ability to provide CEs that are up to the minute, that are relevant and for the set. So we're very happy with with that.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Well, and and you're empowering supervisees right here.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

This this whole section is a real statement for supervisees who feel like they they've got no choices. They are, you know, the there's no recourse for for whatever situation they're in. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Absolutely. And you know, I sit there and I think how many times, and I won't tell you what agency I work for, but I've been with several agencies, and I can tell you how many times have we have I sat there and thought, okay, I don't know why I'm getting this CE. What is this about? And how does this apply to what I'm doing going out in the field and seeing clients? So again, we're hoping that this will help people focus and give some empowerment. Kate, I hate to go backwards on this, but I'm gonna highlight F7D David. So this is about supervision hours and admin hours. Like if you're going to a meeting about the budget, or if you're going to an administrative, uh, you're you're hearing about a different reorganization. That's redundant, a reorganization of the agency, then we're saying that those don't count for clinical supervision hours unless in your jurisdiction and the supervisor signs off on it, then it's appropriate because there may be some crossover there. But there were concerns about folks counting those hours as supervision hours that had really nothing to do with clinical. It was all business. And so again, look at for those of you who are, and I hope every single one of you are thinking about giving us feedback on this, look at the way that 570 is worded, give comment on that, please. We just felt like it was important to highlight that.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Well, it's a hot topic. I mean, that is something that comes up again and again, you know, web counts as a direct uh experience hour.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

And there will be guidelines that will be published with this, but they're not in there right now. So the just the way it's worded, give feedback on it. 57G. We made sure that we updated language there to clearly identify in writing the services provided by supervisees and reflect their roles, and supervisors reflect their roles in the billing records. So just make sure that everything

Educator Boundaries And Harassment Protections

SPEAKER_00 35:11

is very clearly written and articulated. For counselor educators, we updated language regarding exploitation and relationships with students and former students. So again, you can look at that language, give feedback on that. But a couple of things I do want to highlight 511 E is an Edward. Counselor educators do not serve as counselors to students who are currently enrolled in counseling or related programs. So that means your program. If you're teaching at I taught at Texas Tech, so therefore at Texas Tech, I would not serve as a counselor to any student enrolled in the program. And I'll just be very blunt again about this. My feeling on this, this is Brett, not the committee, but here it is. That the way that programs are set up, especially K-Crep programs, you as a faculty member give input on the progress of all the students in the program. So when you say that you are a counselor educator, and that then how is this student doing as far as their dispositions for K crack? It's hard to extricate yourself because you do have some advisory and some evaluative role in that, even if they're not directly in your classes. So we wanted to make this pretty clean. And I just saw a question about if you're an adjunct professor.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

And you know, I think that that really brings up something that that I think that we need to look at. And I I'm gonna make a note of that. Please, I didn't see who made that comment. Dr.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Samantha Loranja.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

I'm gonna encourage you, Dr. Raja, please go on the ACA website and make a comment about ask that question. Because I think that we should deal with that perhaps in guidelines and look at that. But I will tell you that, Eva, you have to be super careful because I know in some programs, adjunct folks do still have the ability to attend meetings and to get feedback on progress for all students. So give us some feedback on that, and we will definitely look at that. F11B, that counselor educators don't condone or subject students to any form of harassment. And again, we felt it was important to not just put this as sexual harassment. This is any, any ANY form of harassment. And in the glossary, that is defined and so very important that we I want you all to know that we expanded that to any form of harassment. I think that's all I'm gonna say about Section F right now.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

I'm sure that Dr. Walker, you talk a lot about dual relationships with supervision. We did talk about extending boundaries in the supervision relationship. F11F is in Frank. Always, always, always, supervisors need to keep in mind the power differential between themselves and their supervisees. And in this, we say you have to clarify the nature and limitations of the relationship, should be time limited and or context specific with student consent. And the example that I provided for guidelines, which I don't know if it'll be, everybody has to look at our guidelines, and that has to be approved before it goes into an official guideline. But an example that I suggested for guidelines was that if a student is put on a student committee in a college, many times, and I encourage this, I was an associate dean, and I wanted to make sure I had students on practically every committee in the college that where it was appropriate, then those students were interacting with faculty in a way that was a dual relationship. It was very clear. And so that's time limited, it's consent of the student, it's articulated with the student what that relationship is. And then when that committee is over with, that dual relationship is done. And so being very, very clear about those things, where those boundaries occur, those boundary um extensions occur. Also, we want to say that the Texas Code, and Dr. Walker, you teach on this all the time. And I respect what you teach about. I've heard you speak on this. The Texas Code is very, very restrictive, and I appreciate that. About that, we do not extend our professional boundaries. And the reason I gave that example of a relationship such as the duality within a college, you're still within your professional role there. You're still a faculty member. That student is still a student. You're not interacting on a social level, although there can be, what if there's a reception that they attend? That needs to be discussed, that needs to be talked about, that needs to be said. This is part of this committee, and this is to be expected, but this is the boundary. And so again, it goes back to are we articulating that with the student? Is it clear? Is anything muddy about that? So I'm not saying have a dual relationship. I'm saying that there may be in a professional setting some of those that arise based on a committee, based on Chai Sigma IOTA, based on, but you're still a faculty member and that student is still a student. So you're not crossing boundaries there. So I don't think it's an extension. In my view, I don't think it's an extension of the relationship. I think it's a difference in the relationship that must be documented.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

You know, when we talk when we see these words, and so for example, with LMFT supervision, you know, the relationships are prohibited, LPC supervision, the relationships must be managed. So they're they're the minefields, right? And so when you guys come in and you write something that's that specifies and and and makes it clearer, you know, at least we're making better decisions as supervisors and educators, how we manage that relationship, right? Because it's our responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Yes, yes. And I will say that the committee will provide guidelines. There will be guidelines on this and examples. So we hope that those will help expand this as well.

AI In Research And Telehealth Ethics

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Section G, we dealt with things such as AI and how it's utilized in research. And I'm just gonna hit a couple of high points here because I will tell you this is not a section I worked on. This is non-native language for me. And so I hope that I wrote down the things that we discussed. So I'm gonna make sure this is hot off the presses for you all. But for such as the use of AI G6A, and everybody wanted to know how we were gonna handle AI. First of all, how we handled AI is we don't know where AI is gonna be next month. So, how do you do a crystal ball and write an ethics code to encompass AI when everything is changing, even as we speak? And that was that's the challenge because when this code was, when the 2014 code was written, can you even think about the changes that have occurred since 2014? And so, again, the beauty of the guidelines is those guidelines can be updated and changed as technology increases, as capabilities change for in technology. So, but so what we're really looking at here are here in these codes, we're giving basics. And then from that, we're going to move forward with guidelines that are more specific as the times dictate. So I just want to say that. But the ethical use of AI, that we want to make sure that we declare the use of AI, that we identify AI tools that are used in research. Now, this is research that we're talking about here, and how those AI tools were utilized. We go on in G6B that AI is properly credited in accordance with publisher and institutional guidelines. Many, many institutions are coming up with guidelines for the use of AI. So we always want to adhere to what the universities, what the broader institutions are. Are doing with AI. So again, we want to make sure, if possible, to ensure that tools have been tested for bias and accuracy. There are things about AI that we just simply don't know yet. But we always, again, going back to that area of bias, we want to be as unbiased as possible. So I'm going to move quickly through section H, just read a couple of things here that I want to say in section H used to be called distance counseling, technology, and social media. We changed the title to telehealth and technology. And underlying this section is the assumption that counseling is no longer face-to-face only. So just want you to know the lens that we were using is much of what we're talking about is telehealth anymore when we talk about counseling. And that was not the case in 2014. It was just not. And so we want to make sure that, and again, I'll just hit a couple of high points because I really want to get to I, the counselors have to have relevant knowledge and skills related to the ethical, legal, and technical considerations regarding telehealth, that AI and other technologies are supplemental to the counseling process. And that the counselor is responsible for all aspects. So making sure that AI, that we don't just let AI diagnose, that it's supplemental, but that the actual diagnosis needs to be with the clinician. So being specific about some of those things. And again, there'll be guidelines there. I want to get to one that's I'm really excited about, and I know I want to stay within the hour here.

New Forensic Section On Courtwork

SPEAKER_00 45:47

So if we can go to Section I, Section I is a brand new, it is our baby. There were some of us who felt and let me just say, people didn't come in with axes to grind. People came in with lots of experience and lots of different areas and venues in ethics and practice and counseling practice. One of the areas that we saw that was absolutely not being addressed was forensic practice. And if you ask counselors what they are most afraid of, guess what? Going to court, a subpoena, all those things. So we added this section to address those areas. So I'm going to run through just a few things that this section that we endeavored to do with this. So I was on, there were two or three of us who wrote on this section, four, including an ACA staff person who was invaluable. And two of the folks of the four were our attorneys and counselors. So we had attorneys helping us write this. It's also going to the ACA attorney, in addition. But first of all, this addresses the differences between traditional counseling and forensic roles. They're two different roles, they're entirely different. And so in a traditional role, counselors don't become involved in a court proceeding absent a specific request and confidentiality waiver from the client. So this is what we get scared of is okay, what happens when I get a subpoena? Oh my word, what happens? And so, first of all, we define subpoenas in I-4. We look at, and our friends, I will tell you personally, my friends who are attorneys, and I've done a lot of forensic stuff with regard to my practice. And I cannot tell you how many attorneys tell me that many counselors should simply avoid a subpoena. They just ignore it. And so one of the first things we wrote on I-4 is counselors don't ignore subpoenas. That a counselor must review any subpoena to identify the parameters of that subpoena. We hear people say, well, it's from an attorney. Well, it's from a judge. Well, it's from a well, you know what? A subpoena still means you don't ignore the subpoena, period. A subpoena, there are different types, but you don't ignore them. And if and we really suggest that you consult an attorney to check the validity of the subpoena for your jurisdiction, but don't ignore a subpoena. So we looked at uh situations too, which happen often, and this hopefully will help some folks, that if you're called in as a like you're doing work and somebody turns the situation into CPS and you are working with this client, they're involved now with CPS, and CPS comes back and says, Well, we need you to just go ahead and continue the counseling, but we want you to be evaluating this client while you're doing it. And so we very specifically said in I2G that we don't change roles. Once the relationship is established, don't morph from a traditional counselor to expert or evaluator or confidential to a non-confidential role. Pretty clear, because that's too many role changes. And you're it confuses the client. It does can potentially damage that relationship and damage that client. So you don't change roles. After you identify the validity of the subpoena, we also wanted to talk about different roles in terms of are you an expert witness? Are you an educational witness? And there's been lots of questions about are you what an educational witness is. An educational witness is you're informing, you're teaching the court something. You're teaching, for instance, you may have a situation where you're called to give information about trauma. So you go through a trauma model, you go, you explain theoretical perspectives on trauma. That's an educational witness. Sometimes you're a fact witness, and that's really what more traditional counselors typically do. But in terms of fact witness, you just give the facts of the case. We thought it was very important to really give more explanation for what these roles are, because attorneys will throw things at you. Well, you're just going to be our expert witness. Well, what the heck does that mean? And so we're hoping that we give some advice here that's that's useful on that. Other things I want to say really quickly that we don't refuse to participate in a subpoena, that I've had people, and when I do ethics talks, I've had people say, Well, I just don't go to court. Well, guess what? You're gonna go to court if you get subpoenaed. Next to the last thing is that we also put something in here about charging exorbitant rates for court. That I'll hear counselors say, Well, I'm just gonna charge $5,000 and then they won't send, I'll put that in my informed consent, and then they won't. Let's see, where is exorbitant rates? It's 15C. That we don't charge exorbitant rates just to keep from going to court, just to dissuade people from court. So you charge, you can charge differentiated rates. There are rates, some people too do charge more for court, and they need to charge more for court because it may be preparation, it may be other things. That's fine, but don't go outside the norms of your community for what people charge for court appearances. So I know that we're about out of time.

Stakeholder Feedback Deadline And Closing

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Again, I'm so proud of the fact that we are in a profession where we can give this kind of input. It's your code. And we hopefully facilitated getting some updates to that code so that you can use this code and it will help you not only in your practice, but as a professional to more clearly identify your identity. So, Dr. Walker, thank you so much. Thank you for allowing me to be here.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

I'm so grateful for your time and I'm so glad we got this presentation in under the wire so that you guys could, you know, if things were were kind of piquing your interest, and you know, I know counselors, y'all don't want to put it in the chat because you're shy or whatever. Well, you can go to the link that we put in the thread and I'm gonna repost it. If you would like to make comments, you go to the ACA website and follow the instructions and you can make comments. You know, there's there are a couple of things I'm thinking, ooh, I need a little more clarification there. I'm gonna make comments. So this is wonderful, and thank you so much for being on the committee, for having a committee, for being part of ACA and and taking such good care of us. And everyone here, thank you guys for doing an amazing thing on a Thursday night. If you have any issues, you can contact us at KateWalker Training.comslash support. All right, Dr. Hendricks, have a wonderful evening. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

Be ya. If this episode got you thinking seriously about your practice or your supervision setup, the free summer practice audit at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus is a great next step. Pick three areas, get a checklist for each. And if you're ready to build this out fully, the supervisor training is at KateWalkertraining.com. Links are in the description. See you next week. If you love today's episode, be sure to leave a five-star review. It helps other Venomass therapists find the show and build practices that provide. Big thanks to Ridgley Walker for our original fun facts and podcast intro, and to Carl Guyanella for annotating this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.