Boundary Issues and Dual Relationships in the Human Services

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 email 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 or joining a client’s social networking site? Can one maintain a friendship with a former client or client’s relative, or is this a conflict of interest that ultimately subverts the client-practitioner relationship?

In this still-unique resource (originally titled Tangled Relationships: Boundary Issues and Dual Relationships in the Human Services), Frederic G. Reamer, a certified authority on professional ethics, offers a frank analysis of a range of boundary issues and their complex formulations, providing practical risk-management models that prevent problematic situations and help balance dual relationships. Reamer confronts the ethics of intimate and sexual relationships with clients and former clients, the healthy parameters of practitioners’ self-disclosure, electronic relationships with clients, the giving and receiving of gifts and favors, the bartering of services, and the unavoidable and unanticipated circumstances of social encounters and geographical proximity. Updated to reflect recent developments in practitioner ethics and policy, this edition features extremely relevant case studies and analyses of ongoing challenges in the mental health field, school settings, child welfare, addiction programs, home-healthcare, elder services, and prison, rural, and military contexts.