Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) Practice Exam

The key idea is protecting client confidentiality and controlling when and with whom identifying information is shared. Information about clients should be disclosed only to advance their treatment or as required by law, and with appropriate boundaries. Sharing identifying data with a supervisor or consultant is a normal part of professional practice to ensure safe, effective treatment; it’s a permitted, ethically appropriate disclosure within the supervisory/consultation context. Notifying child protective services in cases of suspected neglect is a mandated, legally required disclosure when there is risk to a child, again within proper procedures. Releasing information to a targeted victim under duty to warn is an allowed exception when there is an imminent risk and steps are taken to protect the potential victim. Using identifying client data in a grant application for emergency funding would expose private information to funders for a purpose unrelated to treatment or protection, and would typically occur without the client’s informed consent. Without consent and without a direct clinical or safety need driving the disclosure, this breaches confidentiality and ethics. The appropriate approach would be to provide only de-identified or aggregated data, or obtain explicit consent to disclose identifiable information.