Reference no: EM133745450

Jeff is a practitioner at a not-for-profit agency that provides home-based services to families involved with Child Services or juvenile probation courts. Most of his clients are adolescents involved with juvenile probation and their parents. One day during a home visit, Jeff was meeting with his client's mother. She reported that she felt her daughter was engaging in risky sexual behaviors, drinking, and smoking marijuana. When asked why she felt this way, she said she had found some suspicious websites opened that her daughter visited on their home computer. Her daughter stopped using the computer and only used her cell phone now. The client's mother was unfamiliar with some of the websites and stated that her daughter is always on different social media apps, but she did not know the names.

When Jeff attempted to talk with his client about her mother's concerns, she stated that she is not engaging in any of those behaviors and was tired of her mother always "getting into my business." Jeff felt that his client was being dishonest and when he tried to push further, his client shut down. One day while at his home, Jeff was on his smartphone and decided to Google his client and see what he found. His client's Facebook profile stated that she was 24 years old and she had posted several pictures of her drinking with friends and videos of her and friends engaging in felonious acts such as assaulting a fellow classmate. Additionally, he visited her Instagram page and discovered that she had been posting sexually explicit pictures of herself and soliciting men to meet offline.

The following day, Jeff contacted his client's probation officer and shared what he found out about his client. As a result, his client was charged with assault and then placed in juvenile detention.

• Discuss the difference between professional and personal values and how they influence your professional judgments and behaviors.
• Explain confidentiality and the times when a human service professional would have to break confidentiality.
• Be sure to refer to the National Organization of Human Services (NOHS) ethical standards and your state's confidentiality laws.
• Using the case study , discuss the potential ethical and legal issues surrounding the case.
• What are some ways that Jeff may have violated practitioner ethics? Please be sure to support your points with the NOHS ethical standards and your state's confidentiality laws.
• How could ethical decision making, as discussed in the text, help Jeff in this situation?
• What two things could be done differently to be sure one acted ethically?