Confidentiality, Record Keeping & Data Protection
Is the Service Confidential?
All of our counsellors are professionally trained and work within the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy. A copy of this can be downloaded from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
website.
Confidentiality
The Counselling Service offers an opportunity to think and talk, in confidence. However, we may need to consult with colleagues within the service about our work, and we are professionally required to have our work supervised by a consultant external to the Service and the University. In supervision we DO NOT reveal any identifying details about clients. Sometimes we have trainees working with us who are usually in the latter stages of their professional training. We carefully select and supervise all trainees.
Staff in the service do not pass on personal information about clients (including information about attendance) to anyone outside the service except in the following situations.
• Where the counsellor has your express permission to disclose information.
• Where the counsellor would be liable to civil or criminal court procedure if the information was not disclosed.
• Where the counsellor believes the client, or a third party is in serious danger.
In these circumstances counsellors would not normally break confidentiality without a client's consent, if at all possible, and only to the extent necessary in the circumstances. These circumstances occur extremely rarely.
Do I have access to my records?
Under the Data Protection Act 1988, you have certain rights to access records held about you. If you wish to see your counselling records your counsellor will be able to give you information about the University Policy on access to records.
Record Keeping
The Data Protection Act 1998 requires us to obtain your consent for this record keeping, and we ask you to sign your agreement to our practices when you register with us.
Electronic records – Administrative data:
Your personal details (contact details, equal opportunities data etc.) are stored on a password protected database on a secure University virtual server. Access to records is limited to staff within the counselling service.
Your personal data will only be used to facilitate administrative processes, such as contacting you to arrange an appointment etc., and in an aggregated and anonymous way to produce statistics about the profile of counselling service clients. A limited number of Corporate Information & Computing Systems (CICS) staff have access to the server on which the database is stored but they have this for the sole purpose of system administration. CiCS ensure the server is maintained in line with best security practice.
Electronic records – Online registration:
When you register using the on-line registration system the data you provide is sent to the server over a secure connection making it virtually impossible for anyone to read the data over the network.
Electronic records – Clinical data:
Some data – demographic and ‘clinical’- is kept on CORE NET. None of this is identifiable as belonging to you except to staff at the University Counselling Service. This is a secure website hosted by CORE IMS Ltd. CORE IMS Ltd have attained the ISO/IEC 27001 certificate, which is the internationally recognised standard for information security. Access to records is limited to staff within the counselling service and CORE Net IT support staff and the site is password protected. Any reports drawn from data stored on CORE Net are done in an aggregated and anonymous way to produce statistics about the profile of counselling service clients.
Paper records - Client notes:
We also keep notes about our counselling work with clients, the sole purpose of which is to help counsellors in their work. These are brief coded records and are held securely and confidentially within the Counselling Service and separate from any other records within the University.
We keep records in line with the advice from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, which is six years. After the recommended storage periods, records are then confidentially destroyed.
Some counsellors keep detailed temporary working notes to help them reflect on their work during a case. These are not part of the stored record and are confidentially destroyed when finished with, and always at the end of the period of counselling.