content: International Voice Dialogue Agreement - IVDA

• Continuing one's own Voice Dialogue process.
• Maintaining confidentiality around client's identity, issues, and work.
• Working in accordance with one’s own competence and the client's needs.
• Being clear with the client about the facilitator’s professional orientation (such as coaching, counseling, therapy…) and about what the client can expect.
• Referring clients to specialists if needed^*
• Not using the relationship with the clients or students to one’s own advantage or benefit.
• Respecting the right of the client or student to terminate the relationship at any point.
• Being aware of one's own limits as a facilitator and referring the client to another facilitator if required.
• Staying conscious of bonding patterns that may arise between client and facilitator (transference and counter-transference) and taking responsibility for one's participation in the pattern; paying great attention to not getting involved in a romantic or sexual way with a client or current student.
• Being committed to dealing with any of one's own interpersonal issues amongst colleagues.
• Respecting the client's former facilitators.
• Maintaining transparent and clear professional relationships within the Voice Dialogue community.
• Complying with the laws of one’s country and state regarding professional practice guidelines, obligations and limitations (i.e. practicing within scope of license), professional reimbursement and taxes, legal structures for professional practice.

^*Voice Dialogue practitioners/teachers, especially those who are without formal training in clinical psychology, need to learn to recognize the warning signals of mental illnesses/disturbances – psychosis, depression, personality disorders, etc. – This knowledge helps Voice Dialogue practitioners/teachers, among other things, to determine when they ought not to work with/train someone but instead refer that person to a competent specialist. In any case, Voice Dialogue cannot be a replacement for medical care.

The Agreement was accomplished through the international cooperation of Franca Errani, Giovanni Civita, Robert Stamboliev, Maria Daniels, Geneviève Cailloux, Pierre Cauvin, J´aime ona Pangaia, Judith Tamar Stone, and Miriam Dyak. For contact details, actual document, and the list of supporters, see the official site of the International Voice Dialogue Agreement (www.ivda.info) in various languages

Hal and Sidra Stone about the International Voice Dialogue Agreement:

(...) We feel that these documents maintain the basic spirit of the work – and the underlying psycho-spiritual values that it represents – even as they present criteria to protect the quality of facilitation and teaching. The spirit of the work is protected by the sense of continuing process, the space for the evolution of consciousness (or the expression of the organizing intelligence of the universe), and the avoidance of rigid requirements because each individual's path - and Aware Ego Process - is unique. The commitment to quality and proper safeguards are well represented by the presentation of ethical guidelines and an enumeration of recommendations both for the basic skills and the ongoing process necessary for competent facilitation and teaching.:

Hal Stone & Sidra Stone - Albion, September, 2009

Hal & Sidra further write on their website, in the section about the IVDA guidelines:

(...) We reaffirm our belief that there is no way to credential an Aware Ego process. And, at this time, there is no way to create specific guidelines for the evaluation of an Aware Ego process. It is true that there are basic principles to be learned and training to be received. But the amount required will vary from one person to another. And it is of the utmost importance that teachers and facilitators continue their own process in one form or another. We see this as basic requirements. But individuals are different; the form this will take will be unique for each. And the amount of time this will take will vary depending on the individual. (...)

Hal Stone & Sidra Stone

Find the whole statement on Voice Dialogue International