Selling Out or Staying True?: Building a Private Practice Aligned with Social Work Ethics
A 3-hour Ethics CEU workshop that helps social workers navigate the ethical complexities of private practice by applying the NASW Code of Ethics to business decisions, client care, and professional sustainability.
Friday November 7, 2025 | 12:00-3:15PM | Live on Zoom (recording available for asynchronous learning) | $95
Workshop Description
Many social workers enter private practice with excitement and idealism, but also a nagging worry: “Am I betraying the values of my profession?” High fees, insurance limitations, institutional pressures, and the realities of burnout can make autonomy feel like compromise.
This workshop reframes that tension. The issue is not private practice itself, but the systems and institutions that shape the work. By returning to the core principles and ethical standards of social work, practitioners can build businesses that uphold service, justice, dignity, relationality, integrity, and competence. Moreover, private practice social workers can use these principles not only to guide their own practice but to push back against harmful systems, advocate for clients, and create practices that resist the status quo.
Through discussion, reflection, and case examples, participants will explore ethical decision-making across clinical, business, political, and relational dimensions of private practice.
This workshop fulfills 3 hours of Ethics CE credit for Illinois social workers.
Learning Objectives
01 — Use the six NASW ethical principles to evaluate and guide business decisions in private practice (e.g., fees, policy, marketing).
02 — Identify and apply relevant NASW ethical standards (e.g., confidentiality, informed consent, conflict of interest, documentation) in private practice settings
03 — Recognize common ethical dilemmas faced by private practitioners and use a principled, liberatory approach to resolve them.
04 — Develop a personal “Ethics Compass” for ongoing reflection, consultation, and accountability, including using social work values to resist harmful systemic pressures
Who should attend?
Illinois social workers running, working in, or planning to start a private practice
Social work students, interns, and clinicians seeking guidance on ethical business practices
Social workers supervising or consulting with private practitioners
Practitioners interested in aligning their practice operations with NASW ethical principles and standards
Speaker Bio: Allison Staiger, LCSW, PMH-C
Allison Staiger is the owner of Highwire Therapy and Allison Staiger Coaching & Consulting, and serves as Director of Community & Culture at The Talk Studio. Through her work, Allison supports therapists and other heart-led entrepreneurs through three avenues: therapy, business development, and leadership/advocacy. In addition to her LCSW, she is certified in Perinatal Mental Health and Equity-Centered Coaching and Leadership.
Her therapeutic approach integrates somatics, parts work, identity, self-compassion, and the therapeutic relationship, helping clients understand trauma responses as adaptive survival strategies rather than pathology. She works extensively with caregivers and helping professionals—including parents, therapists, educators, birth workers, clergy, and activists.
Committed to equity, creativity, and liberatory healing, Allison weaves a structural, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive lens into all her clinical, coaching, and educational work.
FAQs
How many CEUs does this workshop offer?
Approved for 3.0 CE hours in Ethics for Illinois Social Workers (Sponsor: Highwire Therapy, PLLC License #159.001610)
I can’t make it live- is there a recorded option?
Yes! Please choose the "Recording, Asynchronous" option at checkout to indicate that is how you will be attending. The recording will be sent out within 24 hours of the completion of the live workshop.
What’s the refund policy?
Full refunds are available up to one week before the workshop.
Should I take this if I am not a social worker?
Highwire Therapy is a Registered CE Sponsor for Illinois Social Workers and Counselors, so you are welcome to attend and receive a certificate if you are not a social worker, but the content of the workshop, while applicable to other licensures, will be focusing exclusively on the NSAW Code of Ethics.