Wenatchee Valley College
1300 Fifth Street
Wenatchee, WA 98801
Syllabus
Department: Chemical Dependency Studies
Instructor: Beverly Warman, M.Ed.
Office: 2221H Wenatchi Hall
Phone number: (509) 682-6676
Email: bwarman@wvc.edu
Office hours: Monday - Thursday 9-10 am, Friday by appointment
Class Number: CDS 208 2 credits
Course Description: Law and the Chemical Dependency Counselor
Focus on contemporary legal issues in the field of chemical dependency training, services, and client-counselor relationships.
Learning Outcomes: The intention is for you to be able to:
1. Be familiar with national and state legal standards and legal responsibilities of counselors, including familiarity with legal codes of related professions.
2. Understanding of the role, limitations and pivotal importance of personal integrity with legal and ethical practices.
3. Identify key areas which lead chemical dependency counselors into legal difficulties including confidentiality, mandatory reporting, personal relationships, counselor relapse, competence and limits, credential requirements, patient rights, mandatory drug testing, HIV/AIDS, special populations, financial exploitation, business issues and malpractice.
4. Look at specific legal issues as it relates to adolescents/minors.
Performance Tasks: The learning outcomes can be demonstrated by these tasks that progressively build to conscious application of legal understanding in counseling:
1. A working knowledge of high standards of legal practices
2. Familiarity with national, state and agency legal standards
3. A working knowledge of Codes of Law related to helping professions
4. Knowledge of professional’s own value system in the process of making legal decisions.
Depth of Instruction: This will be an overview class on the legal aspects of counseling.
Assessment: Grades will be based on points gained from quizzes, tests, papers and other assignments. Attendance will also be taken into account in the final grading process.
Policy on late assignments: Late papers will receive a 10% reduction in points for each day that they are late. Any assignment over 2 days late won’t be accepted.
Policy on extra credit: As a rule, I don’t allow extra credit assignments. Occasionally a situation such as a movie, program, conference, etc. comes up that I believe would be appropriate for an extra credit assignment. If appropriate, it will be available to every student, and it will be each students decision whether they want to take the opportunity.
Make-up exams: I don’t allow make-up exams unless there is a very good reason for them. I wanted to spend time with my aunt from Florida is not a good reason. If an illness prevents you from being in class however, let me know asap. In the event that a make-up exam is warranted, it needs to be completed within 2 days of the original exam, or your score will be “0”.
Students in need of accommodations: If any student has a documented disability that will require accommodation in this class, please see Carla Boyd, the Special Populations Coordinator. Carla’s extension is 6854.
Academic honesty: Please review the policies of WVC regarding academic honesty in the WVC handbook. Any issues involving academic dishonesty will be handled according to these policies/procedures.
This is a breakdown of grading in this course. To find out where you stand at any point, take your total points (determined by adding up points of all of your assignments) and divide that by the total number of points available to date.
Point scale for grading:
A = 94-100% C+ = 77-79% D+ = 67-69%
A - = 90-93% C = 74-76% D = 64-66%
B+ = 86-89% C- = 70-73% D- = 60-63%
B = 83-85% F = 59% or Below
B- = 80-82%
**FINAL EXAM IS THURSDAY, MARCH 19th 8:00 am to 10:00 am!!**
You will have a final unless otherwise specified by the instructor
Learning Resources: The following is the required text for this class.
Issues and Ethics In the Helping Professions, Corey, Corey and Callanan, seventh edition.
WAC 388-805
CDS 208 Winter 2010
CDS 207 & 208 Portfolio Requirements
The purpose of this portfolio is for you to be able to access relevant ethical/legal information as necessary for consultation for a variety of issues, as well as to demonstrate to potential employers the ability to easily locate and interpret ethical and legal codes as well as ethical decision making.
This portfolio is to be organized and presented at the end of the quarter. It will be graded on organization, professionalism, and completeness.
Organization: 15 points
Information is easy to find, information is in the right place, not scattered
Professionalism: 15 points
Information is in good shape and presentable
Completeness: 20 points
All necessary information is contained in the portfolio, including all relevant codes of law and/or ethics, relevant additional information, all ethical/legal dilemmas discussed in class, all article reviews, and personal purpose for each portfolio.