The Human Givens Institute's Ethics policy

Ethics and professional conduct policy

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The HGI Ethics and Complaints Committee:

1. Statement of Practice

As the number of practicing HG counsellors increase so exponentially will the number of interactions with the public in counselling sessions. Experience and the discussions on the HG fora show that not every session will be successful every time.

Success is subjective — it is for the client to determine satisfaction. Sometimes the disappointment, frustration or anger of an unsuccessful session turns into a complaint to the HGI. These are passed to the committee to provide a response.

The committee's method is to obtain from the counsellor complained about an account of the therapy. It looks at what both the client and therapist say about the presenting problem and the course adopted by the counsellor. It is expected that the therapy be in line with the HG approach and the interactions to have been polite. Overall the committee examines that the welfare of the client was the therapist's main concern — which is the link with ethics. HG ethics is about acting to meet the legitimate and balanced needs of a person in a way consistent with the approach taught and published by the HGI..

The committee cannot offer the complainant an alternative therapeutic approach since its members were not in the session nor part of the course of therapy; it looks to the good judgement and conduct of the therapist based on the accounts provided by the complainant and the therapist.

Other matters considered are complaints made by HGI members against other members, and complaints from several sources — public professionals — against aspects of HG practice and policy. These are informed by developments in wider health care and public policy regarding patients, children and young people, duties of care.

2.Constititution

Committee members the committee are appointed by The HGI Board to whom they report and are accountable.

The Committee is drawn from members of the HGI though advice can be sought from any source on a particular issue.

At any one time it consists of between 5 and 7 members appointed for 5 years (renewable at Board's discretion) with an appointed chair who serves a 3 year term (again renewable by the Board)

3. Summary

The remit of the committee is:

to consider complaints in line with the complaints procedure
offer advice and disseminate learning from complaints or questions referred to it
advise on aspects of the HGI's own working and organisation — its governance.
promote the development and dissemination of the HG Ethical Framework
report to the HGI AGM

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