Competency Professional Case Study

So what exactly does it mean to be a competent professional? How is competence assessed and maintained in the field of Human Services or others? And what exactly does ethics and the law have to do with competence? As a professional we need to ensure we answer these questions to ourselves so we may fully understand the important role competency plays in our unique job skill. Competence can be found in many shapes and forms and can be gained or lost at different periods of your life even when it's least expected. When one’s competence is put into question it is usually coming from an ethical or a legal stand point, instead of your everyday thoughts of being a great leader is competent, but competence is much more than that. Counselors must ensure …show more content…
“Counselors practice only within the boundaries of their competence, based on their education, training, supervised experience, state and national professional credentials, and appropriate professional experience. Whereas multicultural counseling competency is required across all counseling specialties, counselors gain knowledge, personal awareness, sensitivity, dispositions, and skills pertinent to being a culturally competent counselor in working with diverse client population (Corey, Corey, Corey, Callanan, 2015).” As a Human Services student, professional competencies are defined by a set of six statements. Each one is generic knowledge that can be built on but not taken away from (NOHS, …show more content…
Without a high level of self-awareness, mental health professionals can obstruct the progress of their clients as the focus of therapy shifts from meeting the client’s needs to dealing with the inadequacies of the therapist (Corey, Corey, Corey & Callanan, 2015).” By accepting that there are areas of “unfinished business”, personal conflicts, defenses measures and vulnerabilities in your own life and then taking on your these issues and conflicts you are less likely to influence your personal beliefs and biases into your work (Corey, Corey, Corey & Callanan, 2015).
Competence in Ethics A few students from the Santa Carla University came up with a two very good definitions of ethics: “Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness or specific virtues.” & “Ethics refer to the study and development of one’s ethical standards. Feelings, laws and social norms can deviate from what ethical is (Velasquez, M., Andre, C., Shanks, T., S.J., & Meyer, M.,