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Southern New Hampshire University

HSE340: Law and Ethics in Human Services

A complete guide to SNHU's HSE-340 Law and Ethics in Human Services, covering the laws and regulations that govern human services practice, including confidentiality, mandated reporting, duty to warn, guardianship, and the ethical principles guiding professional practice.

UndergraduateSNHULaw and EthicsAPA 7th Edition

In HSE-340, students learn about the laws and regulations that govern human services practice. Specific topics include confidentiality, parity, involuntary commitment, mandated reporting, duty to warn, minor and parental rights, guardianship, and advanced directives. The course also discusses the ethical principles that guide human services practice, covering the NOHS Ethical Standards and HIPAA/PHI, as well as the conflicts that arise between ethical principles and the law, culminating in a case review final project.

Confronting genuine conflicts between law and ethics directly

The course explicitly addresses conflicts that arise between ethical principles and the law, rather than presenting law and ethics as always aligned — preparing students for real situations where following the law and following ethical best practice may pull in different directions.

A genuinely broad legal and regulatory landscape

HSE-340 spans confidentiality, mandated reporting, duty to warn, guardianship, and advanced directives — a genuinely wide range of legal obligations that reflects the actual scope of legal knowledge a working human services professional needs.

Key topics in HSE340

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Worked example: when law and ethical principle genuinely conflict

  • Assumed-alignment view: Treating legal requirements and ethical standards as always pointing to the same action
  • HSE-340's approach: Directly examining real situations where legal duty (like mandated reporting) and ethical principle (like client confidentiality) genuinely conflict
  • Lesson: HSE-340 teaches that resolving these genuine conflicts thoughtfully is a core professional skill, not something to be resolved by ignoring the tension

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Frequently asked questions

Why does HSE-340 explicitly address conflicts that arise between ethical principles and the law, rather than presenting legal compliance and ethical practice as always aligned?

Human services professionals genuinely face situations — such as when mandated reporting requirements might conflict with a client's expectation of confidentiality — where the legally required action and the ethically preferred action for a specific client's wellbeing don't automatically match. HSE-340 addresses this tension directly because pretending law and ethics always align would leave students unprepared for real professional dilemmas where they must be reasoned through, not assumed away.

Why does HSE-340 culminate in a case review final project rather than ending with a traditional exam on legal and ethical content?

Legal and ethical knowledge in human services only becomes genuinely useful when applied to a specific, complicated real-world situation, and a case review requires students to actually reason through how concepts like duty to warn, confidentiality, and mandated reporting apply — and sometimes conflict — in a concrete scenario. HSE-340 uses this case-based culminating project because it verifies practical application ability, not just memorized knowledge of legal terms and ethical principles.