The Parent Code of Professional Ethics

Most helping professions have a set of guidelines or rules commonly referred to as a Code of Ethics or a Code of Conduct.  These documents serve to help the professional navigate the numerous situations and circumstances that exist when we introduce human behavior and human interaction.  Unfortunately, parents of a child with a disability are not given their own set of guidelines or rules regarding the parent professional relationship.

We have outlined some basic, yet very important standards for the parent of a child with a disability who is receiving professional services.

                  Providers taking your child to their personal home

                  Gift Giving

                  Professional Boundaries

 

1.  Providers taking your child to their personal home 

 

In no way, shape, or form is a "service provider" to take your child to their home, homes of their family members, or their friends house.  This is an extremely dangerous practice for all involved. It gives me chills to think that one of my staff may have taken a client to their home.  This is an unsupervised setting.  There are usually no other people around to ensure the safety of your child                                                      OR the  professional.   If there are others around,

  its not usually your child they have the vested interest in. 

  Besides, you don't know who is at the home, what their

  backgrounds are and how they will treat your

  child.  As a professional, all it takes is a client saying, "He/she

  touched me."  In this day and age, it doesn't matter if it's true

  or not, your done as a professional: career over, do not pass 

  go, do not collect $200, hang it up and start digging ditches for

  a living.  That is, if your not in jail!

From the parents perspective, this practice is cause for several concerns.  If your child is being taken to a providers home, its not likely that "quality services" are taking place there.  At their very least, this is likely an errand.  The provider has, "forgot to let the dog out", is "getting some lunch", or is "picking up the mail real quick."  Your child's therapeutic time is precious.  It shouldn't be spent running a provider's errands.  At the very minimum, it blurs a very important line between a professional relationship and a friend relationship.  At the very worst, children, ... your child, can be hurt; sometimes fatally.   

                        News Archive Example #1

                        News Archive Example #2

In my time in this field, I have seen many careers go down in flames and children hurt by this practice.  In the end, I know of not one acceptable reason services should be occurring in a providers home.

 

2. Gift Giving    

                               

Often thought a harmless act of caring or acknowledgment, this practice can cause serious problems in the professional - client relationship.  As a general rule, gifts under $5.00 in value are considered acceptable.  These types of gifts usually come in the form of a card, candy, home made food, cookies, etc.  As a professional, the most meaningful and moving gifts I've received were written letters and cards from parents and family members.

 

When gifts are costly and or extravagant it can quickly turn into a sense of obligation on the receiver's end.   If you as a parent give a provider an expensive gift, it may skew the providers ability to deal with "touchy" or "conflictual" situations for fear of hurting your feelings or damaging the relationship. 

 

If you as a parent are given a gift by the service provider, it can affect your ability to make decision that are in the best interest of your child.  For example,

   A service provider purchased a $200 bike for his 8-year-old client.  A nice gesture by

   anyone's standard, and I'm sure was intended as a sincere gift.  A problem arose when

   the parent became dissatisfied with the providers service.  It was no longer helping her

   child. The parent was hesitant to terminate the providers services due to a sense of

   obligation.  Instead of making an already difficult decision for her child, she was hindered

   to a sense of obligation in large part due to the providers gift giving.  When interviewed

   later, she stated that she had a hard time terminating services because the provider was

   so nice and did so much for her and her family.  

Gift giving will interfere with a parent's judgment when it comes to making treatment decisions for their child.

 

As a parent, you want honest, accurate, and sensitive information ... even if its information you don't necessarily want to hear.  Gift giving threatens this part of the parent - professional relationship.  It can put everyone in a very awkward position to have to turn down a gift.  If you feel so compelled, keeping it under $5.00 in value can avoid awkward and potentially damaging circumstances.

 

3. Professional Boundaries 

As with most of these guidelines, this one goes both ways.  As a parent, we invite another person(s) into our lives, to help us with one of the most important things to us, our child.  It is a constant challenge to keep this relationship appropriate and maintain the existing professional boundaries.

 

This relationship is not where you or the professional should get their personal and social needs met.  This relationship is about your child.  When it becomes about someone's "problems with their spouse", "who is sleeping with who", "what staff members are saying about the school teacher or agency owner", then its no longer about your child's needs.  Appropriate boundaries can be one of the more difficult things to maintain.  To such an extent that most of the major fields in psychology have specific guidelines and prohibitions against such relationships. 

We are all human, we develop ties with the families and providers who interact day in and day out with us.  Depending upon the service, a provider may be interacting with you and your child upwards of 30 or more hours a week.  At the end of the day, its critical to remember that this relationship exists to help your child.  If you begin experiencing hesitation when making a decision  because you fear that you may hurt a providers feelings, or if you just develop feelings in general towards your child's service provider, these are red flags that must be dealt with.  Again, we are all human and these things happen.  It becomes a problem when it is not dealt with and allowed to continue.  As a parent, our focus must remain on our child, on the established goals and objectives, and if appropriate progress is being made towards those goals and objectives.  More than that leads down a path of problems for everyone involved.