You should read and understand the Ethical Framework before working with clients. This framework is designed to help you provide your clients with a secure base for your work together. It is good practice to integrate the Ethical Framework into your work and to use it as a resource to help you face any challenges and issues as they arise. This works much better than just turning to it in an emergency or after something has gone wrong.

As a framework, it creates a shared structure within which we all work but with the flexibility to respond to the needs of different contexts and client groups. There are three main sections:

• Our commitment to clients provides a summary and You may use this as a separate document to give to your clients or include it in the information you provide about your service.
• Ethics is designed to help you understand the thinking behind how we work with It can be used in supervision to think through any issues or dilemmas.

The good practice considers the practicalities of putting our ethics into action.