Introduction
Betty Griffin Center is a drug abuse treatment center that advocates for human rights against abuses, including sexual harassment. Located in Florida, the center has been operating an emergency shelter with 54 beds with six transitional apartments. Moreover, Betty Griffin Center provides education, training, and outreach services through St. Johns County, Florida (Betty Griffin Center, n.d.). The staff in the center are highly trained to handle cases of domestic and sexual abuse through the offering of quality services and protection for the victims and minor children. This paper discusses the code of ethics for the Betty Griffin Center, the ethical challenges the center faces, and possible solutions to these challenges.
Code of Ethics for the Betty Griffin Center
The code of ethics for the Betty Griffin Center is centered around its story since its foundation in 1990. In providing professional counseling for the victims of sexual and domestic abuse, the center ensures confidentiality through its professional who contracts and promise to respect the privacy of the abused clients (Betty Griffin Center, n.d.). The ethical code of confidentiality creates an environment where the victims explore sensitive information with the understanding that it will not be misused, repeated, or discussed outside the confinements of the center (Bond & Mitchels, 2021). Throughout their services, the counseling professionals do not disclose any personal information of their clients shared during the counseling period and within the agreed-upon conditions.
Another Betty Griffin Center code of ethics minimizes the risk of further violence. The center confines its clients within the environments of the six transitional apartments, preventing any other troubles with safety plans to keep the clients and their subjects safe. The legal confinements of the center are stipulated in a way that advocates for justice for its clients, preventing further abuse of the victims.
The legal services provided by the Betty Griffin Center attorney are responsible for the legal presentation processes in the entire injunction process. O’Rourke et al. (2018) propose four risks that could be possible in the case of violence against human rights in the setup of domestic or sexual abuses. The risks include vulnerability, security, mental instability, and dangerousness. By the voluntary confinement of the victims and providing shelter for them, the center reduces the possibility of the occurrence of such risks. Violence prevention training, which is appropriate to the specific age ranges of the center, enhances the prevention of further violence cases.
Autonomy is another code of ethics that the center upholds by treating the victims with respect and dignity. Through the code of ethics of autonomy, the center addresses the clients’ independence, giving them the freedom of action and choice (Betty Griffin Center, n.d.). Additionally, the company’s counselors are responsible for encouraging the clients to act with their conscience or make decisions concerning them. Such decisions come when the clients want to report the individuals who abuse their rights. However, the center informs its clients of their rights, a code of ethics that empowers the victims to realize their potential while seeking justice for their rights in society.
Ethical Challenges
Several state and national mental health associations, including the National Association of Social Workers, the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association, have been at the forefront of refining and developing ethical standards. These standards create an environment where patients’ rights are protected.
The ethical standards for guiding the different centers for counseling, including the Betty Griffin Center, are instituted to guide the professionals and prevent the exploitation of the victims. However, the ethical principles may range from explicitly prohibiting some behaviors or insisting on some sanctions to the extent of open interpretations. Moral codes are used or adopted by state licensing boards to guide the standards of practice of organizations or companies within the counseling field.
Despite the different efforts made by the Betty Griffin Center through its code of ethics, it faces some ethical challenges or dilemmas. Some issues that the Betty Griffin Center might face have both legal and ethical implications. If the center opts to expand into other states, such as California, it will face some ethical challenges, which will necessitate it to change its conduct.
In California, social workers, psychologists, and child, family, and marriage counselors are governed by a specific code of ethics that has illegalized dual relationships. These relationships are inclined to lead to the exploitation of a patient or the impaired judgment of the therapist, which is also adopted in Florida. Every ethics code requires professionals to practice their professions within some scope of limitations. In case the professional acts breach these principles, they may be subjected to some membership guidelines or lead to dismissal. Likewise, the Betty Griffin Center could be subjected to sanctions by the licensing board if its workers violate these ethical violations.
Besides the provisions in the licensing guidelines and the ethical requirements, the professionals and the company often face controversies in handling some issues. For instance, predicting violence is a debated concept. One such problem is predicting violence, which has sparked debates among professionals (O’Rourke et al., 2018). Some argue that predicting violence is not measurable, while others believe that certain elements can be used to predict it. However, the question of how to differentiate the levels of risk in such situations remains a dilemma.
Risk assessment is a concept that can help determine the levels of risk, and common sense should be applied in these cases. It is important to note that all types of violence can be potentially deadly and cause harm to victims. Examining a person’s history of violence is not enough to determine the level of risk they pose, as other factors may be linked to violence and should be considered, which could present a challenge to the Betty Griffin Center.
Another ethical challenge in the mental health field is the issue of cost. Typically, the price is not a concern when serving clients who are seeking treatment for non-violent issues. However, clients seeking violence treatment or counseling are sometimes under duress, either pressured by family or friends or referred by the criminal justice system. Therefore, they may not see the need to pay for services they feel they do not need (Frazer & Hutchings, 2020).
Likewise, it is more common for the clients entering the justice system to be primarily underemployed, poor, or unemployed. Male clients may avoid seeking such services due to their cultural upbringing and societal expectations of masculinity, leading to a vulnerability in fear. Thus, the cost can be a significant barrier for these clients to access necessary mental health services.
Current Research and Suggestions on Resolving the Ethical Challenges
Many researchers have shown immense interest in the ethical issues faced by emergency centers such as the Betty Griffin Center, including the issue of confidentiality, prediction of violence, cost issues, and licensing guidelines. In research by Poldrack et al. (2018), the authors indicate that neuroimaging techniques could be one of the breakthroughs in predicting violent behavior in the general criminal and clinical population. Past behavior is one such predictor of violence (van Mens et al., 2020; Gkargkavouzi et al., 2019).
Sexual or physical violence toward any individual is likely to continue until an intervention such as psychological treatment is undertaken. Therefore, this gives the upper hand in predicting domestic violence offenders. However, these published researches indicate that other factors must be considered while they support the idea of observation of past behavior, which is supported by the empirical findings. Understanding of the causes of violence is enhanced by ecological principles that consider various factors such as social, community, family, interactional, psychological, and biological factors. There are different views on the cause of violence, with other researchers supporting their positions with various facts over time.
In the actual world, the elements of confidentiality, cost, and prediction of violence must be considered, not just the theoretical factors. This is often not easy because of the differences in the statutes and jurisdictions in every state. Thus, deciding whether to report a case is complex, especially where some clients may not want their cases to be reported. Therefore, before reporting or following some judgment-based decisions, clinicians and other personnel should ensure that they familiarize themselves with the status of the state.
Conclusion
Organizations and management education institutions study and practice ethics extensively. Including such standards in their objectives, visions, stakeholder involvement, and employee engagement is a typical way for organizations to practice ethics. The Betty Griffin Center is a drug rehab facility that fights for human rights violations, such as sexual harassment. Since the business promotes the welfare of the community, it takes into account maintaining a number of ethical standards, such as secrecy and autonomy, and lowering additional dangers to victims. The center does, however, encounter specific difficulties, such as those related to cost, license, and confidentiality, which many writers and their answers have examined.
References
Betty Griffin Center. (n.d.). About the Betty Griffin Center. Web.
Bond, T., & Mitchels, B. (2021). Confidentiality & record keeping in counseling & psychotherapy. Sage Publications.
Frazer, E., & Hutchings, K. (2020). The feminist politics of naming violence. Feminist Theory, 21(2), 199–216. Web.
Gkargkavouzi, A., Halkos, G., & Matsiori, S. (2019). Environmental behavior in a private-sphere context: Integrating theories of planned behavior and value belief norm, self-identity and habit. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 148, 145-156. Web.
O’Rourke, M., Wrigley, C., & Hammond, S. (2018). Violence within mental health services: how to enhance risk management. Risk management and healthcare policy, 11, 159–167. Web.
Poldrack, R. A., Monahan, J., Imrey, P. B., Reyna, V., Raichle, M. E., Faigman, D., & Buckholtz, J. W. (2018). Predicting violent behavior: What can neuroscience add?Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(2), 111-123. Web.
van Mens, K., de Schepper, C., Wijnen, B., Koldijk, S. J., Schnack, H., de Looff, P., Lokkerbol, J., Wetherall, K., Cleare, S., C O’Connor, R., & de Beurs, D. (2020). Predicting future suicidal behaviour in young adults, with different machine learning techniques: A population-based longitudinal study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 271, 169–177. Web.