Special Ethical Considerations when Working with Kids & Teens: Complications to Boundaries & Confidentiality

Description

Working with children and teens brings ethical and legal complexities that are not always addressed clearly in professional codes of ethics. Clinicians are still responsible for protecting confidentiality, supporting autonomy, minimizing harm, and acting in the client’s best interest, but those responsibilities become more complicated when the client is a minor, parents or caregivers have legal authority, and family systems, schools, courts, or child protection systems are also involved.

This course helps behavioral health professionals think more carefully about the ethical questions that arise when serving child and adolescent clients. Rather than offering simple rules for every situation, the course provides a practical framework for evaluating competing responsibilities, clarifying the role of the clinician, and making decisions that can be explained, documented, and defended.

Kathryn Krase, Ph.D., J.D., M.S.W., Principal Consultant with Krase Consulting and founder of Making the Tough Call, brings a distinctive combination of social work, legal, policy, and child welfare expertise to this topic. As an attorney and social worker who helps mental health, healthcare, and educational professionals understand their ethical and legal obligations, Dr. Krase is well suited to guide clinicians through the complicated realities of confidentiality, consent, boundaries, mandated reporting, and professional decision-making when working with minors and their families.

Dr. Krase grounds the training in a practical ethical framework designed to help you navigate the competing responsibilities of working with children, teens, and their caregivers. Rather than relying on simple rules, you will learn a structured approach to ethical uncertainty—slowing down to evaluate the child’s developing autonomy, potential harms, and state-specific legal requirements. You will leave equipped to make professional decisions that are legally sound, clinically thoughtful, and properly documented.

Confidentiality and boundaries become especially complex when a young client’s therapeutic needs collide with parental authority, court involvement, family conflict, or the nuances of telehealth and digital communication. To navigate these pressures, you will explore how to establish clear role expectations, manage informed consent, and communicate effectively with both minors and caregivers. Ultimately, this course empowers you to protect your young client's trust and therapeutic progress while confidently handling the practical and legal realities of family involvement.

Key Takeaways

• Use a structured ethical framework: Strengthen your ability to evaluate competing responsibilities when working with child and adolescent clients, parents, caregivers, and other involved systems.
• Clarify confidentiality with minors: Better understand how confidentiality applies to child clients and why developmentally appropriate conversations about privacy and disclosure are essential.
• Navigate parent and caregiver involvement: Set clearer expectations with parents and caregivers while keeping the child client’s therapeutic needs at the center of the work.
• Respond to complex disclosures: Approach sensitive information from minors with greater attention to clinical context, legal requirements, consultation, and documentation.
• Strengthen professional boundaries: Examine how role clarity, technology, physical contact, social media, gifts, and overlapping relationships can affect ethical practice with children and teens.

Why This Course?

• Clinically relevant ethics training: Focus on the kinds of dilemmas clinicians actually encounter when working with children, teens, parents, caregivers, courts, schools, and child-serving systems.
• Practical decision-making support: Move beyond overly simple answers by learning how to evaluate options, consult appropriately, and document the reasoning behind difficult decisions.
• Useful across practice settings: Apply the content in private practice, schools, agencies, community mental health, child welfare-adjacent settings, telehealth, and other behavioral health environments.
• Focused on the child client: Maintain a clear therapeutic role while recognizing the legal and practical realities of parent and caregiver involvement.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the ethical and legal responsibility of professionals to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with child clients.
• Describe the ethical and legal responsibility of professionals to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with parents/caretakers of child clients.
• Explain the limits of confidentiality as they relate to the clinical relationship with child clients.
• Apply a framework for informed consent with child clients appropriate to the developmental realities of the individual client.
• Apply a framework for informed consent with the parent(s)/caretaker(s) of child clients appropriate to the realities of that client’s situation.

Whether you work with children and teens in private practice, schools, community mental health, agencies, telehealth, or other clinical settings, this program offers a thoughtful and practical approach to ethical decision-making with minors and their families. Join Dr. Kathryn Krase for a clinically grounded ethics program designed to help behavioral health professionals navigate boundaries, confidentiality, consent, and caregiver involvement with greater clarity and care.

Format and Access

This is a non-interactive, self-studycourse and consists of 3 Ethics CE hours of video instruction and a post-test.

Course Details

Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to Attend: 

Course access and completion instructions.

Instructor and Disclosures

Instructor

About Kathryn Krase, Ph.D., JD, MSW

Kathryn Krase is a Principal Consultant with Krase Consulting and founder of Making the Tough Call is an expert on the professional reporting of suspected child maltreatment. She has authored multiple books and articles on the subject. She has years of experience consulting with government and community-based organizations to develop policy & practice standards.

“Making the Tough Call” is a project of Krase Consulting. Kathryn S. Krase is the sole proprietor of both initiatives. Both Making the Tough Call and Krase Consulting are registered entities in New York State.

Disclosure Statement: 

The instructor(s) for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose.

CE Hours

Credit Hours:

This course consists of 3 ethics continuing education hours of credit.

Counselors:

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No, 6693.  Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified.  Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Mental Health Counselors. #MHC-0048.

Marriage and Family Therapists:

Many MFT licensing boards accept our courses or one of the approvals which we have from professional associations.  You can check with your board to determine if your licensing board would accept this course.

Social Workers:

Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, #1609, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 05/02/2024 – 05/02/2027. Social workers completing this course receive 3 ethics continuing education credits.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Social Workers #SW-0435.

Addiction Professionals:

This course has been approved by Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits, effective 3/6/2026. NAADAC Provider #193104, Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is responsible for all aspects of the programming.

Psychologists:

Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Telehealth Certification Institute LLC maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Psychologists #PSY-0128.

Art Therapists:

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Creative Arts Therapists #CAT-0093.

Other Professionals:

This course qualifies for 180 minutes of instructional content as required by many national, state and local licensing boards and professional organizations.  Retain your certificate of completion and contact your board or organization for specific filing requirements.

This course is a non-interactive, online self-study.

Participants may request a printed version of their certificate of completion to be delivered by mail. A shipping/handling fee of $6.95 will be charged per request. Shipping internationally may require an additional charge.

Accommodations and Policies

Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations.

You can click on the following links to view our policies:

• Accommodations for Individuals with Disabilities.
• Cancellation Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Support Options
• Disclosure Statement