Should a therapist disclose personal information to a client, accept a
client's gift, or provide a former client with a job? Is it appropriate
to exchange e-mail or text messages with clients or correspond with them
on social networking websites? Some acts, such as initiating a sexual
relationship with a client, are clearly prohibited, yet what about more
subtle interactions, such as hugging or accepting invitations to a
social event? Is maintaining a friendship with a former client or a
client's relative a conflict of interest?
Frederic G. Reamer offers a frank analysis of a range of boundary issues
that human-service practitioners may confront. He confronts the ethics
of intimate relationships with clients and former clients, the healthy
parameters of practitioners' self-disclosure, the giving and receiving
of gifts and favors, and the unavoidable and unanticipated circumstances
of social encounters and geographical proximity. With case studies
addressing challenges in the mental health field, school contexts, child
welfare, addiction programs, home health care, elder services, and
prison, rural, and military settings, Reamer offers effective, practical
risk-management models that prevent problems and help balance dual
relationships.
Since the publication of the previous edition of Boundary Issues and
Dual Relationships in the Human Services in 2012, digital technology
has transformed how human-service professionals deliver services to
clients. This third edition brings the book up to date, adding
discussion of the ways in which practitioners' online communications and
technology-based relationships with clients can violate ethical
standards and providing practical advice for how to resolve boundary
issues.
