Gatekeeping in the Mental Health Professions

This book guides graduate faculty and supervisors in effective gatekeeping by bringing together the body of professional performance standards for multiple mental health fields and providing best practices, tools, and templates for use with trainees. Following an introduction to the professional, ethical, and legal issues involved in gatekeeping, the authors discuss contextual factors that can affect trainee functioning. Topics addressed include strategies for assisting low-performing trainees, faculty and supervisor roles, professional collaboration, evaluating trainee performance, designing remediation plans, documentation, and prevention and early intervention. Text features include "Notes From the Field," "On the Legal Side," and "What Would You Do?" to enhance understanding of the material. "Gatekeeping in the Mental Health Professions presents a treasure trove of rigorous scholarship and practical recommendations for addressing one of the most vexing challenges that clinical educators and supervisors face—dealing with the problematic personal issues, interpersonal behavior, or unprofessional conduct of a student/trainee. From admission to graduate school through licensing for independent practice, the authors provide policies, procedures, contracts, and sample dialogues that are compassionate, mindful of students' varying developmental stages, and respectful of due process. This authoritative text will help to fulfill the fundamental responsibility of every clinical educator and supervisor to protect our profession and the clients we serve." —Anne Marie "Nancy" Wheeler, JD, and Burt Bertram, EdD, Coauthors, The Counselor and the Law "This unique and valuable contribution to the field covers all aspects of gatekeeping, a term frequently discussed but sometimes not practiced. As the experts in this volume point out, mental health educational programs are ethically bound to ensure that their graduates are competent. This book not only discusses gatekeeping responsibilities but also provides useful ways to practice and document them. This must-read text is thorough, interesting, and critically important." —Samuel T. Gladding, PhD, Wake Forest University *Requests for digital versions from ACA can be found on www.wiley.com *To request print copies, please visit the ACA https://imis.counseling.org/store/detail *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to publications@counseling.org