Confidentiality Agreement

Confidentiality

• Crew’s counselling service is confidential. We will not discuss anything about you outside of the Counselling Team without your explicit agreement, except in exceptional circumstances (see examples below)
• This Confidentiality Agreement also works as our counselling contract. It is an agreement between counsellor and client about how the counselling will work, and what the boundaries of the work are
• Confidentiality is a crucial part of the counselling service. Our counsellors work in accordance with the Ethical Framework of the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy)
• We base our confidentiality information and contract on the BACP Ethical Framework and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018

Storage of Personal Information

In line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018, we store the following information on counselling service clients:

• Contact details and personal information e.g. date of birth
• Drug use information e.g. what and how much you use (if relevant)
• Counselling session attendance
• This information is kept on a secure and confidential database and locked filing cabinet which is only accessible by relevant counselling team staff
• Information from the CORE (Clinical Outcomes Routine Evaluation) worksheets used in therapy are stored on our secure CORE database
• When working remotely, all client information is held on Crew’s secure database. Any written information e.g. session notes are kept in locked files
• We keep paper files and session notes for 5 years in accordance with BACP guidelines after which time they are shredded and Crew’s internal database entries are deleted

How do we use your information?

• For communicating with you
• For statistical purposes
• To track your journey through the service and monitor the service as a whole
• To ensure safe and ethical practice

DAISy (Drug and Alcohol Information System)

DAISy (Drug and Alcohol Information System) is a national database which holds data relating to specialist drug and alcohol treatment from services across Scotland. This information helps to monitor the treatments provided, understand the outcomes from treatment and improve the care that is provided in future.

What information will DAISy hold?

Information about your support will be recorded on the system by Crew in order to help with your care. This includes some personal information such as your name, postcode, date of birth, gender and ethnic group. If at any time, you wish to be removed from the DAISy database, please let your counsellor know.

Why does DAISy need to store your personal information?

The personal information collected by Crew is required to allow us to provide care directly to you. Public Health Scotland (PHS) may also use this data (with any information that could identify you individually removed), to increase their understanding of the needs of people using drug and/or alcohol services. This helps them to plan services to provide you with the best quality health care.

Who can access the information held about me on DAISy?

Within PHS, access to information which could identify people is strictly controlled. PHS will not share information which could identify you to people not involved in your care journey. Those involved in your care journey will be able to access your information directly from DAISy.

Recording of Concern and Risk

If a counsellor is concerned by issues raised by a client related to risk to self or others or the welfare of a child, they will bring this to the attention of the Crew Counselling Co-ordinator/Chief Executive Officer to ensure safe practice. This is also recorded confidentially in the client file. There may be times when we are required by law to break confidentiality. If such a situation arose, your counsellor would always strive to inform you if confidentiality needed to be broken.

Examples of when confidentiality may need to be broken include but are not limited to:

• Explicit child safety issues
• If someone is making advanced plans to take their own life through suicide
• If someone poses a clear risk to themselves or another person
• Information relating to acts of terrorism
• Information relating to money laundering and/ or drug trafficking
• If someone is putting the public at risk through driving under the influence

Child safety issues - in child protection cases we contact health visitors for children under 5 years old and for over 5 year olds we contact the head teacher and/or social work as directed by GIRFEC (Getting it Right for Every Child) guidelines.

Mental health issues such as advanced plans to take your own life through suicide - we may need to contact your GP or the emergency services.

Terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking and putting the public at risk through driving under the influence - we would need to contact Police Scotland.

These are rare things to happen but we have responsibility for your safety and the safety of others. If any of these issues are concerning you, please talk to one of the counsellors – they are here to help.

Your personal information

You can request to see any information and files we keep with information about you. You can choose to keep your details anonymous on Crew’s internal database.

I understand and agree to Crew’s Confidentiality Agreement