Abstract

Connecting ‘Family Therapists’ across Ireland

A cross section of Family therapists in Ireland expressed a need for a means of intercommunication that could be easily accessed . Family therapists in Ireland work in a variety of settings within the adult mental health service, child protection service, probation service, adolescent mental health service, as independent therapists/and in small clinics across the country. Not many of these therapists within the mental health services are employed as ‘family therapists’ per se. As a result, in order to maintain and grow their skills they may work privately outside their ‘work’ hours and will interact with a family therapist supervisor who supports them in their practice. Being dispersed geographically and in their employment, many of these professionals feel isolated and long to be able to keep contact with their colleagues. An Alumni Association established in Clanwilliam Institution in Dublin was warmly welcomed, but could only provide irregular face to face meetings in their training facilities.

Research shows that there is considerable concern around use of social media for family therapy. These fears are associated with the separation of the professional and personal information of therapists, what if clients can access personal information about their therapist, how might that affect the relationship in the therapy room (Desloge, 2013; Crabtree and Hessel, 2015). The ethics of for example acceding to a client’s friend request on SNS is an example of the type of issue raised (Zur and Walker, 2011) or searches for client information (Harris and Kurpius, 2014). To date the professional accreditation bodies have not issued sufficient guidelines around how family therapists should comport themselves professionally on social media. Some such recommendations have been proposed by a selection of authors, Baker (2013) ; Jordan et al (2014) and Baier (2018) in an effort to assist family therapists to act ethically and professionally when engaging with SNS.

The possibility of establishing a social media presence to facilitate this communication demand was investigated. The social media footprint of several Family Therapy Professional organisations worldwide was surveyed. Most of these bodies had a presence on Facebook/Twitter and Linkedin, the only one which did not was the Family Therapy Association of Ireland (FTAI). This is the body which accredits trained systemic psychotherapists as Family Therapists in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.familytherapyireland.com/). Of the organisations that had a presence on social media, the majority were not updating their pages on a regular basis. Only the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (https://www.aamft.org/) was consistently providing updates and messages through SNS.

These findings indicate that social networking through the accepted social media sites might open family therapists to unwanted efforts to contact them by clients and possibly accusations of unethical or unprofessional behaviour. There was a need for a safe, basic method of communication, which although limited in terms of access, as it would require a username and password, could be overseen and moderated by a skeleton staff. The potential to establish a forum and blog on the existing website of Clanwilliam Institute was proposed to the director, who was agreeable .

Baier, A.L. (2019) ‘The Ethical Implications of Social Media: Issues and Recommendations For Clinical Practice, Ethics & Behavior’, 29:5, 341-351, DOI: 10.1080/10508422.2018.1516148

Baker, J.D., 2013. Social networking and professional boundaries. AORN journal, 97(5), pp.501-506.

Crabtree, S. and Hessel, H. (2015) ‘Social Media & Professional Ethics in Clinical Work.’ [Online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heather_Hessel/publication/299135514_Social_media_and_professional_ethics_in_clinical_work/links/56ef173808ae4b8b5e7561d9/Social-media-and-professional-ethics-in-clinical-work.pdf

Desloge, Marie H., "Do clinicians perceive a connection between their personal and professional habits of self-disclosure? : a study exploring self-disclosure on social networking sites and in therapy" (2013). Masters Thesis, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/593

Harris, S.E. and Robinson Kurpius, S.E., (2014) ‘Social networking and professional ethics: Client searches, informed consent, and disclosure’. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 45(1), p.11.

Jordan, N.A., Russell, L., Afousi, E., Chemel, T., McVicker, M., Robertson, J. and Winek, J. (2014) The ethical use of social media in marriage and family therapy: Recommendations and future directions. The Family Journal, 22(1), pp.105-112.

Zur, O. and Walker, A. (2011) ‘To Accept or Not to Accept? How To Respond When Clients Send "Friend Request" To Their Psychotherapists Or Counselors On Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter Or Other Social Networking Sites’ [Online] Available at: https://www.zurinstitute.com/socialnetworking/