Show Notes

In today’s episode, Chante’ Clark, licensed clinical social worker, will discuss the nuance between social work code of ethics and practice.

Hi Chante’, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Chante’, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about your practice journey.

Yes. So as you stated, my name is Chante’ Clark and I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I’m licensed in the state of North Carolina and Texas.

I am the owner and founder of Matters of the Heart and Mind Counseling and Consulting, PLLC, where we provide therapy to children, adolescents, families, couples who are navigating trauma, grief, life transitions, and emotional challenges.

And a little bit about my journey. I’ve always had a passion for children and families at an early age, and thought initially when I got into college that I wanted to go to law school. Quickly, decided that after taking a social work course, that was not for me. That social work was the way for me. And from there just continued the journey through social work and getting my clinical license and providing services to children and families.

Amazing. And obviously as we’re speaking today, we’re speaking mostly from your experience from being in the US but as many listeners know, I’m also in Canada, so you know, if I can pull a few Canadian pieces in, I sure will do that.

I know many clinicians learn about the code of ethics for licensure exams in the US, but they struggle to apply it in real clinical situations. How can supervisors and experienced clinicians help bridge the gap between understanding ethics on paper and applying them in everyday practice?

I always say passing the exam means you understand ethics intellectually, but practice is where it comes into play and becomes real. So every day clinical work, ethics shows up and how we make decisions, how we communicate with our colleagues, how we communicate with our families, how we set boundaries, even how we show up emotionally in the room.

So as a supervisor, I know it’s my job to play a huge role in bridging the gap and helping clinicians slow down and think about critical decision making, ethical decision making. What does the code say? How does this apply to this specific situation? And so as a supervisor, I try to create a space where we reflect, discuss, I ask thoughtful, challenging questions to my supervisees to really help them get their own sense of application of ethics in their current practice. So I can’t practice with them in the office, so I don’t try to give them the right or wrong way. I try to guide them and mold them so that they make decisions based off of agency nuances, policies and that they still remain ethically in compliance to what our code of ethics says.

I love that. And I’m curious because here in Canada we do have a different code of ethics than social workers in the US. And it was interesting. I had two students and what we did is we did a little activity where I got them to read a specific ethical guideline, and I asked them to explain each, their interpretation of that particular ethical standard or ethical code.

When we each went through it, each of us had a very different interpretation of that ethical code, and all of them could be interpreted as right. So I’m curious when you are navigating some of these probably more gray or up for interpretation type codes of ethics. How do you support supervisees or, even integrate that kind of grayness into your practice?

Absolutely. So one of the things that I try to help my supervisors understand is you are building your own clinical competence, and there’s always gonna be a gray area.



And as you stated, there’s always going to be opportunities, which we all interpret the code a little differently based on that particular situation. And so I challenge my supervisees to say, okay. What if this was the situation, would you still interpret the code and still apply your same ethical practice in the same way?

And sometimes the answer to that is yes. And then sometimes that’s no. And I help them understand that. That’s okay. I just want you to be confident in the clinical and ethical decision that you’re making. Help me understand and justify, the why. I really don’t like the why, right? But the why. Then I’m gonna support you because my job is not to tell you what to do.

It is to help shape you to the best ethical clinician that you can be. And we all have that space of being able to interpret the gray areas differently, and I don’t want them to lack confidence in that. I don’t want them to feel anxiety in that I wanna help strengthen their clinical skills and really make sure that they have the competence, that when they leave me in two years and they’re out there on their own, that they’re like, you know what?

I understand the code and I’m thinking critically about it. I’m questioning, would I handle this differently if the circumstances were different and then I’m making the best decision for my client, right?

I love that. And so what are some of the most common ethical dilemmas that you see clinicians encounter when working specifically with children and families?

Oh wow. So I just had this today. Actually, one of the common challenges that I experience a lot as a supervisor with some of my supervisees is navigating confidentiality between minors and parents, right? So the right for parents to know information because minors can’t provide consent. When you’re dealing with teenagers who have certain nuances that they’re not yet ready for parents to share, that is extremely challenging, and I think that’s one of the most challenging things to help some of the clinicians’ balances.

What do you report to parents when they’re minor and what can you keep confidential to build that trust and that rapport in session with your kiddo?

Amazing. How can clinicians remain ethically grounded while still being flexible enough to meet clients where they are, whether it’s emotionally, developmentally, or even culturally?

So one of the questions that I challenge with my supervisees with is to ask themselves, are they being clinically appropriate and culturally responsive? And so that helps bring humility into their space with their clients. That helps bring understanding. And just because something is clinically appropriate doesn’t mean that it responds culturally to their client and what their client needs.

And so I always challenged him to think about that because sometimes it applying ethics without considering a client’s lived experience can create more ethical dilemmas in gray areas, so I try to get them to challenge themselves about finding that balance of being clinically appropriate, but also culturally responsive.

I love that. Chante’, I think this might be a really great place for us to, pick a specific ethical code and break it down and show how we can incorporate this into practice, especially if we notice something might be a little bit more gray or so forth. So do you have a particular ethical code that, you can give us an example about?

Absolutely. So one of the ones that comes up to mind quite often in supervision is self-determination versus safety. It’s 1.02 in our code of ethics and topic about self-determination, and it says “social workers respect and promote the right of clients to self determinate and assist clients in their efforts to identify and clarify their goals. Social workers may limit client’s rights to self determinate when in the social worker’s professional judgment, client’s actions or potential actions pose a serious foreseeable and imminent risk to themselves or others.” (NASW, 2021).

So how would that show up? If you were to work with someone who’s struggling with that particular code of ethics, how would you help them through that?

 For example, real life ethical tension happens, right? So I have a few supervisees who’ve mentioned, when a client makes a choice and you don’t agree with it, for example, teens who engage in risky behavior, what do you do? When do you step in? When do you step back? When do you invite the parents into session and have those conversations about the risky behavior? Where does that line fall?

And that kind of goes back to one of the challenges that some of the supervisees has with their current practice is understanding and deciding how much of this information. Do I share with the parent how much of the risky behavior is it a part of the therapeutic work that we’re doing? And finding that balance of autonomy, but also still protecting your client and understanding the parent’s right to protect them as minors.

I love that. And I’m here actually looking at the Canadian Association of Social Workers. So for my Canadian listeners, and I would say, very similarly, like we have different guidelines, but like very much similar. And one of the ones I find probably the most intriguing is Guiding Principle 5.4 (CASW, 2024), which is social workers in private practice act in integrity in all business practices.

And me as someone who, absolutely, loves business. That’s why we’re here on the Designer Practice Podcast. I love how it’s incorporated and it gives us a little bit of a guideline. Doesn’t mean that our individual regulatory bodies don’t also have additional practices.



But it really outlines, some of the specifics that we need to think about, like implementing clear policies, procedures for practices, documentation, storage, retention, security, destruction of records. And while our specific regulatory bodies may also highlight these. It shows that they’re important.

But I would say probably the number one thing most business owners or private practice owners don’t have in place are clear policy and procedures for practice. Interestingly enough, that would be an ethical– I don’t know if it’s a dilemma, but it’s something that we don’t create yet. It is a part of our ethical guidelines.

And so how do we as social workers, ensure that we’re following all of these policies and procedures, and then of course code of ethics and our standards of practice as well. So it’s just interesting that we’re like pulling some of these apart for other social workers to see how do we put in a practice?

In this case, if we’re meeting policy and procedures, we create policy and procedures. And there’s also many regulatory bodies that I’ve seen that actually give you a clear guideline of what those are. Now, according to our codes of ethics, it’s not really specifying what the policy and procedures should include, but I know many social work regulatory bodies might say you definitely need this. So you can get an idea. And of course that’s just minimum basis, right? We’re not even talking about the fact that really there should probably be more as well. So anyway, I just wanted to highlight that too. I’m just curious on what your take is on that.

Absolutely. So I think that is a huge thing that we forget about in our profession is that we are business owners and I wish that there was room for having that kind of course in grad school, we didn’t get that. We did not get any kind of business knowledge and understanding. And I think that would be so pivotable in higher education for us to have, because when we step out, we don’t understand the nuances of that. And like you stated, most of our code of ethics, it gives us a guide does not give us specific things that should be in there. So that’s why seeking legal consultation is super helpful and making sure that you have practice and liability insurance. And those are not always nuances that we are taught in our master’s level program.

So I totally agree that, the pieces of establishing a practice and the nuances that the code covers In that regard, I think there’s some work that we got to catch up to do in terms of helping us really feel competent in that area, because a lot of us are not competent in that area because we don’t have a business background.

I think it’s also interesting, now that we’re talking about this, that there is a code of ethics, at least here in Canada about business practices, yet we don’t have a course or get training on business practices. And I always take a moment where we’re talking about this to do a pitch to any institution out there who wants someone to do a course or a training on business practices.

I’m here. I do it every time because one of these days I’m hoping someone hears that I would be delighted to do a course on that for our fellow social workers because I agree. It’s so pivotal and actually many of us even go into social work to go into private practice. Not all of us, but many do.

And so if that’s the case, how come we don’t even have a little sliver of a course to teach us some of these things? So yeah, I think that’s really interesting.

So getting back to your experiences, working with clinicians and, ethical responsibilities when it comes to complex cases involving trauma, grief, family conflict, or any other things that, you work with and you see your clinicians work with. How do clinicians balance the ethical responsibility with the relational aspects of the therapy as well?

That is where balance comes in, being present, being empathetic, being human, all while maintaining professional boundaries. I tell my clinicians all the time, make sure that you remind your clients of limits of confidentiality. And not that you want them to be afraid to tell you things you want them to understand that I want you to share. I want you to tell me, I want to help you navigate through these things. There are also things that I have to seek others support and then break your confidentiality to make sure that we are maintaining a level of safety.

And I encourage clinicians to make decisions that help them understand. Is that something that they do with their families or is that something that they do not, and I’m a clinician where if I have to make a report to DSS, if I’m needing to call law enforcement, my client is very much aware and they’re sitting in the room with me. I don’t make those decisions without them in the room unless they specifically request to not be in the room.

That makes complete sense. When clinicians feel uncertain about an ethical decision that they need to make, what are some practical steps they can take? And how can supervision serve as a supportive and protective space during those moments?

Always tell clinicians to pause. The first thing to do is to just pause. Sometimes we create urgency. And I’m not saying that the ethical decisions that need to be made don’t come up in urgency, but I always tell them to take a moment to pause and don’t react immediately if they absolutely don’t have to.

If there’s no imminent danger, if there’s no imminent safety risk at that moment, if there’s a moment to pause, to tell them to pause. And then I challenged them to go back to their code of ethics and maybe if they’re still new in the nuances. That’s why supervision is important.

I have an open door policy. I have scheduled supervision. Yes. But I tell my clinicians, call me if you need something in the moment, because sometimes it can’t wait till Friday at three o’clock when I can talk to you or when we have scheduled supervision and that’s okay. And we work out the nuances of my timeliness in responding to them in urgent matters or here in the state of North Carolina, you have to have a backup supervisor and a plan. So if I am not able to respond, your backup supervisor is available for you.

And then think about the documentation process. And so I remind them that keeping good records, keeping good notes is always important in these ethical, critical decisions that have to be made. And so I invite them in supervision to be vulnerable with me in those hard moments of uncertainty so that I can gain a perspective of what they need from me as a supervisor and help them make informed decisions and then continue to grow their clinical competence. Because that’s what I want to do at the end of their two year period. I want them to feel very confident that they grew in their clinical confidence.

I love that. Chante’, you provide clinical supervision and consultation. Can you share a little bit about your approach and who would be a good fit to work with you?

My approach is very supportive, collaborative, and growth focused. I do try to be absolutely real, so while I maintain a level of professionalism I try to keep being a human at the core of supervision. And I tell them all the time, I haven’t always been a clinical supervisor. I haven’t always been a clinical social worker.

I have lived experiences too, and so I try to create as space where they feel comfortable to ask questions, to process things, to be challenged, and to challenge me. I tell them, this is your supervision and I still invite you to challenge me as a supervisor so that I can grow and be better for the next supervisee that comes along.

So I ask them about being honest in areas where they’re still developing and I support them through their decisions, right? I don’t try to dictate this is what you should do. There are times where I’ve had to be a little bit more strong and firm in, balancing the decision that they’re making versus it’s going against ethical guidelines and it could jeopardize their license and my license. I’ve had a few of those, but not very many.

And then I help train them and get them trained in areas that they have an interest in. So some of my supervisees know that I will send them trainings once they tell me what they’re interested in, what they niche wants to be.



When trainings come to my email, I’m forwarding those trainings to them, and then I’m attending those trainings with them because that’s their interest and how can I better serve them if I am not equipped in their interest. So I try to do it collaboratively in that way as well. And so a good fit as a clinician for me, as someone who’s open, who’s willing to learn, reflective and committed to growth professionally and personally.

In that two year period, I’ve watched them grow not only as clinicians, but some of my clinicians share some of their highest heights in their personal lives with me. Because the, that’s the nuance of we’re human and making that connection and building that relationship, and I’m a part of their colleague network at that point.

So to connect with Chante’, her email is [email protected].

You can also scroll down to the show notes and click on Chante’s website. Chante’, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss the nuance between social work, code of ethics and practice.

Thank you for having me. This has been such a meaningful conversation and I’m just so excited about supervision, and I appreciate just being able to share with you guys.

And thank you everyone for tuning into today’s episode, and I hope you join me again soon on The Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by Denis Pavlov Music from Pixabay

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References

CASW. (2024). Code of Ethics, Values, and Guiding Principles. Retrieved from https://www.casw-acts.ca/files/attachements/CASW_Code_of_Ethics_Values_Guiding_Principles_2024.pdf 

NASW. (2021). Social Workers’ Ethical Responsibilities to Clients. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English/Social-Workers-Ethical-Responsibilities-to-Clients