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The ethics of family involved in rehabilitation counseling has not been addressed in the professional literature, although the recognition of the family in the process has been acknowledged since the first Professional Code of Ethics for Rehabilitation Counselors (Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification, 1987). This article explores the trajectory of the inclusion of the family in rehabilitation counseling codes of ethics and contemporary considerations for future code revisions, including specific consideration for ethical decision making when families are involved in rehabilitation counseling.
Families have been part of the process of many specialty areas of counseling for decades, including rehabilitation counseling. The code of ethics becomes the banner that announces and affirms professional and societal values. Millington, Jenkins, and Cottone (2015) declare that "Finding the family ethos in rehabilitation counseling begins with an understanding of community values" (p. 52). Ultimately, they conclude that "rehabilitation counselors are agents of social justice ... advancing an applied theory and practice of community values" (p. 44). Indeed, rehabilitation counseling "is unique among counseling specialties in that is exists in the space of society's ethical failure in this specific regard. The profession was legislated into being to address the exclusion of people with disabilities from society" (p. 44).
The literature in the field of rehabilitation counseling has not yet focused on ethics specific to the family, although families have been part of the professional ethical codes for decades. Recent developments in accreditation standards for professional counselors involved in clinical mental health counseling for people with disabilities - what is being called clinical rehabilitation counseling - has lead to an historical affiliate agreement between the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) and the Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE) around the clinical standards. Although the empirical foundation for the CACREP clinical rehabilitation counseling standards is not found in the literature, these clinical rehabilitation standards are part of the CACREP standards revision process estimated to be completed by 2016 (Milsom, Bobby, & Gunderman, 2014). Consequently, considering ethics when the family is involved in rehabilitation counseling is timely, not only because of the new CACREP clinical rehabilitation counseling standards, but also as CORE completes its revised accreditation standards in 2015 (F. Lane, personal communication, January 8,2014) and the Commission on...