ABSTRACT
Practitioners are increasingly aware that their practice is bounded by the law, as well as by ethical and professional considerations. This may be because their work takes place within a statutory setting, such as health or social services, or via the impact of quasi-legal concepts such as contracts and confidentiality, or arising from a growing recognition of issues such as litigation, liability and negligence. Statutory changes such as the introduction of human rights and data protection law have had a major impact of therapeutic practice, which it is no longer possible to ignore (see Chapter 6). Therapists working with risk are also conscious of the interface of their practice with the law in the form of key pieces of legislation such as the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Children Act 1989. Despite the growing impact of the law on therapeutic work, the law is rarely taught to practitioners on training courses in a systematic way comparable to the way it is to other professionals such as nurses, doctors or social workers. The result is that therapists are often uncertain about the nature of their legal responsibilities and unsure about the legal parameters of their work, and may be subject to conflicting advice or guidance about their actual duties regarding compliance with the law.
