Male Clients- urgent!

[Paramour36]

well as I'm still trainingyet My grandfather clock comment got me a rather lovely email asking if I think there are any professional therapists that DO give hand relief?

Food for thought on whether I'm getting into the right profession

 

[terry t]

I’m surprised by Jadegirl’s comment



I guess that that depends on precisely how you define a ‘professional therapist’. But I think that there are quite a lot of women who advertise massage and do offer this type of service. That is precisely why I spent some time earlier on this thread advising legitimate therapists to adopt a cautious advertising policy, and also why Cola gave such detailed guidance on how to screen phone calls from male clients. There are also some ‘controversial’ links in the earlier thread on [link=http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tm.asp?m=208811]Tantric Massage [/link].

And from a client’s perspective, I would agree with the advice which ‘alrl’ gave on an earlier thread



Alan

 

[ben_terna]

Why are you surprised?
Clearly there are people cruising these boards in hope, and my email address wasn't hidden. Could have been an innocent question but then why wasn't it posted on the board?

I've told friends that I'm studying massage and one laughed and said "isn't that a bit seedy" which I thought was strange as he's had professional* massages.

* my definition as theraputic, qualified & non sexual.

 

[cank Uncotly]

Funny, isn't it, how desperate some people must be to be trawling through sites like this in the hope of paying for a quick one? Don't know about anyone else's area, but it's not that difficult finding someone willing to do whatever you might want for cash - our local newspaper, free through the door every week, has a whole page of quite explicit ads. Doesn't take a traiend detective to find these people!

 

[MartinJC]

I agree with Supersub. I’m not sure how many people are actually trawling these boards looking for therapists who do provide such services: but I’m sure that there are a lot of people who use ‘massage’ as a search term in Google, when what they are looking for is the type of massage that women advertise in local newspapers, and theythen discover this forum.For one such example, see Funnybunny’s post on [link=http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tm.asp?m=367807]nudity v underwear: disappearing 'thread' [/link]. We’ve had such a full discussion on this on the first page that I was surprised that Jadegirl thought it necessary to repeat the point!
On the earlier thread [link=http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tm.asp?m=124949]Re: Legalising "Massage" [/link], ‘sportstherapy’ (who is a very experienced tutor) commented:



Alan

 

[sackexarperma]

Alan,

I can actually see why you and cola got into such a heated debate on this thread. Not because you were saying opposite things but cause you refer to people and make comments on them, as you've done twice with me now, without actually saying what your issue is.

What point have I bought up "again"?
Excuse mefor being niave by not realising that by asking what I deemed as an innocent question wouldresult in a lewd "private" email. I clearly understand the difficulties that therapists face with this problem but I didn't expect such a thing happening by me posting a question on this board. And if you want me to be specific and saythey looked through google and found this site as opposed to cruising this site thenyour being way to picky.How they came across the site is irrelevant but why they bothered contacting people is the point I was making and I don't count that as bringing something up again.

perhaps ask the moderators to do a WARNING & Precautions thread on what negative things can happen as a therapist and they can attach all the emails to it that have been discussed already to not upset you by having them mentioned again.

 

[Amanda :D]

Hi Jade

Firstly, my apologies for not making my earlier implicit criticism of your contribution as clear as you would have liked. I was simply trying to be tactful, and to comply with the HP guidelines on posting, which state



As you may have guessed, I thought (and still think) that a couple of your contributions to this thread were surprisingly naive. But I could cite other examples from this forum of therapists being naive, so I also thought that your contribution was an opportunity to reiterate the points which have been made on the earlier page about screening clients. And my comment about people finding this site via Google certainly wasn’t intended as a ‘picky’ criticism of Supersub or yourself. I was simply trying to reiterate that some threads on this site are looked at by people who are seeking a very different type of ‘massage’ from that which we provide. Most threads on this forum attract fewer than 500 ‘hits’, most of which will presumably be from therapists or student therapists. But Funnybunny’s thread entitled ‘naked massage’ attracted more than 10000 hits! I presume that many of these were not from therapists or student therapists, but were from people trawling the internet looking for sexual services. (And I think that Funnybunny was naive to give her thread the title ‘naked massage’: it would have been better to have given it a title such as ‘massage etiquette’).
You refer to the earlier debate between Cola and myself. It may be worth mentioning that if one looks back at the very beginning of this thread, Phae commented :



I think that Cola and I would both respond by saying ‘it is OK to treat male clients provided that you take certain precautions to ensure that you only attract genuine clients’. Where we disagreed was on the precise nature of the ‘precautions’ which it is advisable to take. I would emphasise the importance of a very cautious advertising policy (so that I personally would still advise newly-qualified therapists not to have a website) as well as not being alone in the clinic with a new client (so personally I would advise Phae not to accept bookings from ‘total strangers’ unless they have been recommended by someone she knows). Cola emphasised the importance of adequately screening new clients.

Incidentally I agree with your comment



If one looks at the ‘therapy swap’ forum, the top of that forum contains some very useful guidelines from Azalia. I agree that it would be useful to have similar guidelines for student and newly-qualified therapists on a thread at the top of this forum. For example, I think that newly-qualified therapists should certainly be advised not to advertise in

 

[nwlvxtvt]

Fair enough. I hold my hands up and say "I'm naive". Thats why I'm a student and not a therapist.

hopefully by time I'm ready to practice I can take on board all the necessary recommendations so that I don't encounter any unwanted attention.

 

[TanikaReuddy]

Errr, Alan D I think this is case of hindsight is 20:20!!

.

I had no problem until just before the post was pulled and it was only when I googled it and realised that HP has such a good google presence.

FBx

 

[Yobitza]

In reply to this aspect of the recent posts on the thread:

This is something that is already under discussion by the moderators because, quite by coincidence, a similar recommendation was made a couple of days ago regarding posting something about safety for ALL therapists.

We have it in hand and will get some guidelines/links onto the forums asap.

"<snip> for brevity" above meant I didn't want to make too big a quote box, but ALL suggestions made here are being taken into account.

For future reference though, it's always a good idea to follow up a suggestion for moderators that's made in a post with either a PM to one of us, or via Forum Support. Requests to mods could be missed otherwise, although in this instance, I had seen it already.



Quite right, it's a certain type of surfer who will put key words into Google and possiblyfind a link to HP, rather than coming straight here and searching.

At the time the other thread was deleted, a search on the title of that thread revealed that we were not invery good company, and within the top 20 results [&o]

Holistic

 

[Rorschach]

In the meantime, the topic of safety for therapists was also raised in the Reflexology forum, and this article on the FHT website was recommended by one of our members:

http://www.fht.org.uk/MainWebSite/Homepage_7b25e591-887c-4f23-a445-12f6ce6aee5b.aspx

then click on 'The knowledge tree' (top right), then scroll down the alphabet to P, and the article is the one titled 'Personal safety and the therapist'. It's in PDF format.

I'm not a member of FHT but seemed to be able to access it OK, so hopefully others will be able to as well.

Holistic

 

[scragette2000]

another option for the panic alarm thing (if working from home) is a £10 remote door bell from B&Q, with the ringer next door.
Anyone workign with a receptionist would be advised to have this as well; a knock on the door will defuse almost all problems.

 

[Pompal 09.]

Hello BIA

This is rather an old thread you've replied to, but thanks for your contribution. Unfortunately, the links in the preceding posts all became inactivated following the recent changeover to the new forums.

I've just edited my post above to activate the link, but then unfortunately got an error message on the site.

No matter, since the above thread was last active, a 'sticky' thread was subsequently posted at the top of the General Therapies forum, where links have now been updated and all relevant info on therapists' safety is given:

http://www.healthypages.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=38788

Holistic

 

[daza3033]

ahhh, at least that explains why so many link don't work; I think it was one of the others that linked me into this page - still learning my way around the site