CROW (Counselling Resources on the Web)
Understanding Confidentiality
When you come to the Student Counselling Service it is usually to discuss personal issues. You are entrusting your personal information to another person and may wonder how private your story is with the counsellor or within the Student Counselling Service. All our staff adhere to the Privacy Act 1993, which is a law that governs how personal information is collected and used. It requires staff to respect the privacy of personal information that they have access to. In practice this means:
- If anyone such as your lecturer, a friend, or a parent phones Student Counselling Service, the staff will not tell them that you have seen a counsellor unless they have your permission to do so.
- If we have to phone your home, we will not mention Student Counselling. Instead the staff will leave their first name and the service phone number, for you to return the call.
- In addition to the Privacy Act, counsellors are governed by their professional codes of ethics. This means they do not disclose your personal information except in limited circumstances. An example of this is when you ask a counsellor to support your request for an extension on an assignment. In this case the counsellor must provide information relevant to your request. No unnecessary personal information is provided.
- Sometimes clients give counsellors permission to share certain information with their parents, their doctor or to specific lecturers. Again, the information given is kept to the minimum needed for the specific situation.
Information may be given without your permission in the following circumstances.
- Incapacity: when, in the professional opinion of the counsellor , you cannot give permission yourself, this permission is sought from those who are able to look after your interests, eg next of kin.
- Legal requirements: If we are compelled by law to disclose information, then we may have to do so in certain very limited circumstances.
- Safety: If the counsellor believes that you or someone else is at risk of serious and immediate harm, a counsellor, usually after consulting a professional colleague, may, disclose sufficient information to another person to enable them to assist you or the person in danger.
Supervision
Counsellors regularly discuss cases with professional colleagues. In these situations no names or other identifying information are used and any such consultants are bound by similar ethical and legal confidentiality requirements. The purpose of these discussions is to improve the quality of counselling.
Collection and Storage of Information
- Confidential Information: When you come to Student Counselling for your first appointment, you are asked to fill in a confidential information form. The information you provide is recorded on a database, enabling us to gather statistics. This provides us with information about patterns of service use. When used for statistical and administrative purposes, no information is included that would identify individuals.
- Case Notes: After the counsellor has met with you, case notes are written up. The counsellor only writes enough information about treatment to enable another counsellor to take over, if necessary. The counsellors are also careful about writing anything that would be detrimental to the client, should the case notes be subpoenaed (ie ordered to be brought before a judge in a court of law). This is of course a very rare event and could only occur where your counselling is relevant to a specific court case. An example of this might be when a client lays criminal charges of sexual abuse against another party.
- Storage of Case Notes: The notes written by the counsellor are kept in a numbered file inside a locked filing cabinet. We take every reasonable precaution to ensure the files are only accessed by authorised people. After hours the files are protected by a monitored security system.
- Letters about clients: At times the counsellors write letters to academic staff, or referral letters to other agencies. A hard copy of the letter is kept in the client’s file, and a copy is also kept on a computer disk, which we can lock up after hours. We do not keep letters relating to clients on the computer’s hard drive.
- Client Satisfaction Survey: Periodically the Counselling Service conducts a survey of the service to gauge client satisfaction and to look at ways of improving what we offer. Clients participate voluntarily in the survey and there is no way for us to identify who has or has not filled in the questionnaire, making the feedback completely anonymous.
If you would like to make an appointment to see a counsellor to learn more about this topic please contact the counselling service on your campus. Distance students can contact any one of the campuses.
Please tell the receptionist if you need an urgent appointment.
Manawatu: Student Counselling Service, Turitea Campus, Monday to Friday 8.30 am - 5.00 pm (8.30 - 4.30 during semester breaks). Telephone (06) 350-5533.
