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Ethics, Boundaries & Safeguarding

Ethics, Boundaries and Safeguarding cover: a practitioner and a service leaver talking in warm light behind a clear boundary marker, beside the words Ethics, Boundaries and Safeguarding.
  • Professional
  • £20.00
  • Course 4 of 6
  • About 100 minutes
  • Certificate on completion

The ethical foundation of AURIS practice: boundaries, confidentiality and its limits, scope of practice, recognising risk and referring on, and the daily habits that hold it all together.

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About this course

Ethical practice is rarely built in dramatic moments. It is built through hundreds of ordinary decisions made consistently. This course gives you the AURIS ethical foundation in five lessons: how to hold professional boundaries, what confidentiality means and where it ends, where AURIS coaching stops and clinical care begins, how to recognise risk and route it rather than carry it, and how to turn all of it into daily habits you can keep. It is drawn from AURIS governance policy and is required for every AURIS practitioner.

What you will learn

  • Hold clear professional boundaries and explain why they protect everyone
  • Explain confidentiality in plain language, including the safeguarding override
  • Know where AURIS coaching ends and therapy or clinical care begins
  • Recognise early signs of risk and route them through the AURIS risk response pathway
  • Build a daily ethical routine you can hold on an ordinary week

Why this matters

People only share what they believe you will respect and protect. Boundaries, confidentiality and scope are what make that trust possible, and safeguarding is what keeps it safe. Without this foundation, everything else in AURIS practice becomes risky.

Course curriculum

5 lessons. The lesson content itself opens once you start the course.

  1. Lesson 1 · about 20 minutes

    Professional Boundaries

    This lesson is about holding clear professional boundaries, and why a boundary protects the relationship rather than distancing it.

    • Hold a clear professional boundary and say why it exists
    • Recognise the small, ordinary requests that test a boundary first

  2. Lesson 2 · about 20 minutes

    Confidentiality and Its Limits

    This lesson is about what confidentiality actually promises, and the one limit that always overrides it.

    • Explain confidentiality in plain language before you begin working with someone
    • Name the four situations where the safeguarding override applies

  3. Lesson 3 · about 20 minutes

    Scope of Practice

    This lesson is about knowing exactly where AURIS coaching ends, and what to do when the work in front of you belongs to someone else.

    • State clearly what is inside and outside AURIS scope
    • Use the scope check to decide whether to continue or route on

  4. Lesson 4 · about 20 minutes

    Recognising Risk and Referring On

    This lesson is about noticing risk early and routing it properly, rather than carrying it on your own.

    • Recognise early behavioural, verbal and contextual signs of risk
    • Follow the AURIS risk response pathway and document it honestly

  5. Lesson 5 · about 20 minutes

    Holding It All Together

    This lesson is about turning the ethical foundation into a routine you can actually hold, session after session.

    • Run the AURIS ethical practice cycle across a session
    • Build a small ethical routine you can keep on a bad week

What is included

  • Guided reflections
  • Interactive exercises
  • Practical activities
  • Downloadable worksheets
  • Assessment
  • Portfolio work
  • Certificate on completion

Before you start

Courses 1 to 3 of the AURIS Practitioner Programme.

After you finish

Professional Practice Checklist Before every session: - I am regulated and present. - I know today's objective. - I know today's boundaries. - This work is within my scope. - I would be comfortable documenting today's decisions. During every session: - I stay in scope and signpost anything outside it. - I notice changes in behaviour, language and context. - I ask calm, clarifying questions when something concerns me. - I do not promise secrecy where someone may be at risk. After every session: - I record facts, not opinions. - I route any concern to my safeguarding lead. - I reflect on what worked and what did not. - I seek supervision or support when I need it.

Research and evidence

Sourced from AURIS governance policy AURIS-GOV-POL-060 (Ethics and Professional Boundaries) and AURIS-GOV-POL-062 (Safeguarding and Risk Response). Where a case is described it is a composite consistent with AURIS pilot delivery. No participant names, quotes or timestamps are used.

Course progression

This is course 4 of 6 in the AURIS Practitioner Certification.

  1. Foundation
  2. Applied
  3. Practitioner

Course 4 of 6 in the AURIS Practitioner Programme. Next is Motivational Interviewing and Goal Setting, then Applied AURIS Practice, where you take all of this into supervised delivery.

Related courses

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£20.00 one-off payment, with lifetime access to the course.

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