Contract Information

Counselling approach:
I believe that my clients have the desire and the capacity to grow towards fulfilling their true potential, and that they are the experts on their own lives. I will therefore not give you advice or offer solutions, but will work with you to help you to understand yourself more fully and to find your own inner resources.
 
With greater self-awareness and trust in yourself, I hope that you will be able to make constructive changes, leading to a more satisfying and meaningful life.
 
Confidentiality:
Everything you share with me in the course of our work together will be treated as highly confidential. However, there are one or two limits to confidentiality, which you need to be aware of:
 
• In accordance with the ethical framework of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), I am required to undertake regular supervision. For this purpose, I may disclose some details of our work to my supervisor but identifying details are never shared.

• I may be legally or ethically obliged to break confidentiality, for example where I consider your welfare or the welfare of others to be seriously at risk. Wherever possible, I will consult with you before breaching confidentiality.
 
Sessions:
Sessions last for 50 minutes. Our initial contract will run for six weeks, after which we will review the counselling process and negotiate further sessions as appropriate. Normally we will meet on a weekly basis at a regular time.
 
Payments:
Your fee will be £75 per session unless otherwise agreed. Payments can be made in cash at the start of the session or within seven days by bank transfer, for which I will provide an invoice.
 
Late cancellations:
Late cancellation fees are payable as follows:
0-24 hours’ notice – full session fee payable.
24-48 hours’ notice – 50% of session fee is payable.
 
No charges are payable if more than 48 hours’ notice of cancellation is given.
 
Wherever possible, I will give you at least 48 hours’ notice of any change to an arranged appointment.
 
Late arrivals and missed sessions:
Please let me know if you are running late. If I have not heard from you within ten minutes of our agreed start time I will send you a text message.
 
I will wait another ten minutes. If I have had no response I will consider the session to be a late cancellation. To ensure you are safe, if I have not heard from you within twenty four hours I will notify your emergency contact.

Extreme Weather:

Your safety, and mine, are always the priority. If severe weather (such as snow, flooding, extreme heat, high winds or other hazardous conditions) makes it unsafe or unreasonable for either of us to travel to, or work from, the therapy room, I will contact you as soon as possible.

Wherever practicable, I will offer your session online via Zoom at the same appointment time. If this is not possible or is not appropriate, the session will be cancelled without charge to either of us or rearranged where possible.

Alcohol and drugs:
For therapy to be useful it is important that you are psychologically available to engage with the sessions.
If you regularly use prescription/recreational drugs or alcohol, please consider your level of psychologically availability. If you are unable to be present or connected for our time together it will be significantly harder to make any changes.

If I feel that your substance use is currently detrimental to the usefulness of therapy we may need to consider ending either our session or our contract.
If you use prescription medication which makes you tired please consider the best time of day for sessions.
 
Email / telephone contact and Social Networking:
Contact by email or telephone in between sessions will be limited to practical arrangements only. Telephone, messaging or asynchronous counselling is only available by prior agreement.
I cannot accept Social Networking friend requests, as this can compromise the confidential and therapeutic nature of the counselling relationship.
 
Ending counselling:
Normally, the ending of the counselling contract would be by mutual prior agreement. However,you have the right to end your counselling at any time.
I would appreciate your letting me know if you decide not to continue with therapy, giving at least 48 hours’ notice to avoid cancellation charges. If at any time I feel that counselling is no longer helpful or appropriate for you, I will discuss this with you and may suggest you discontinue.
You will be invoiced for any unpaid fees.
 
Ethical framework:
As a BACP registered counsellor, I am bound by its Ethical Framework for Good Practice and am subject to its complaints procedure. Please visit www.bacp.co.uk for details.

Purpose of this agreement:
It is important that we have set out the terms under which we will be working together before the counselling begins, to avoid misunderstanding and to make our work together more productive.

Counselling approach:

I believe that my clients have the desire and the capacity to grow towards fulfilling their true
potential, and that they are the experts on their own lives. I will therefore not give you advice or offer solutions, but will work with you to help you to understand yourself more fully and to find your own inner resources.

With greater self-awareness and trust in yourself, I hope that you will be able to make constructive changes, leading to a more satisfying and meaningful life.

What is Online or Telephone Counselling? 
Online or telephone counselling provides an opportunity for exploration of personal difficulties in a confidential and supportive environment. This may include expressing painful feelings which many of us experience at certain times in our lives. Online or telephone counselling gives you the opportunity to access counselling support at a time and in a place which is convenient to you.
This contract applies to both online and telephone counselling and hereafter when it refers to online counselling this includes telephone counselling.

Online counselling can provide support for a broad range of personal difficulties, but there are occasions where it would not be considered suitable, for example where a client is currently at risk. If this applies for you either when applying for support, or during ongoing sessions I will offer information of alternative sources of support, which you can make contact with and request support from as an alternative or addition to current counselling.

I am not able to provide online counselling to any person who is under the age of 18 online counselling is also not suitable for anyone currently in crisis. If this applies to you I can help with information on referral to other agencies providing face to face counselling services who offer crisis support, or if you are under 18, to online services which are specifically directed to a younger age group.

Geographical limits:
The advantage of online counselling is that the counsellor and client work remotely together, even in different countries. Some countries have different registration and practice requirements for online counselling, in particular some states of the USA and Canada. Unfortunately I cannot accept clients from these countries.

How does it work in practice? 
We will agree an appointment time, usually weekly. This might be via telephone, internet voice only (VOIP) or online.

Online appointments are conducted on Zoom which is secure and encrypted. You will be sent a recurrent Zoom link for our sessions. If you are nervous about how to use Zoom please let me know and we can set up a brief session to help you understand how it will work.
Please ensure you are in a safe, quiet and private setting for our sessions.

If for any reason we experience technical issues during an online appointment I will try to re- connect with you, but if this is not possible we will make contact via telephone.
If we have arranged telephone counselling, I will contact you from my mobile at the appointment time or I am happy for you to call me if this feels more convenient.

If you are taking the phone or online call from an address other than the usual address specified I would request that you notify me at the start of the session. This is to ensure your personal safety.

Payment for your sessions 
Online session fees are currently £75.00 for a full hour session.
Level 4 student counsellors requiring mandatory sessions will be charged £50.00 for the hour.

 

I am happy to provide an invoice for your sessions via Splose. Payment is due within 48 hours of the appointment time. Please make the payment by bank transfer.

Cancellations
If you have confirmed a session but are unable to meet at the appointed time or cancel with less than 24 hours notice or are not available for the hour booked the full cost of the session will be due.

Cancellation within 48 hours will incur a late cancellation fee of 50% for the session unless there is a technological breakdown which prevents us meeting online. In the event of this occurring, we would discuss how to re-arrange the scheduled appointment.

If you are running late, please text me on 07530 118 900. I am happy to wait up to 20 minutes, however your session will end at the agreed time. After 20 mins with no contact I will end the session as less than 30 minutes would not offer a window for meaningful work in a safe way.

Please be aware that if you miss a session unexpectedly, and I do not hear from you within 24 hours of our appointment, I will send a text message to your emergency contact. 

Alcohol and drugs:
For therapy to be useful it is important that you are psychologically available to engage with the sessions. If you regularly use prescription/recreational drugs or alcohol, please consider your level of psychologically availability. If you are unable to be present or connected for our time together it will be significantly harder to make any changes. If I feel that your substance use is currently detrimental to the usefulness of therapy, we may need to consider ending either our session or our contract.
If you use prescription medication which makes you tired, please consider the best time of day for sessions.

About the way I work 
I will provide online counselling sessions which create a supportive, non-judgmental environment where you will be given time and space to gain insight into what is troubling you. This process can foster growth and lead to positive change in your life. More details about my way of working are available on my website.
Online counselling can feel different to face-to-face work, but I will make every effort to ensure you feel comfortable and understood. I have undertaken accredited, additional training in online, telephone and asynchronous counselling to ensure that I am working with you in the best way I can.

Confidentiality, Security, and Data Protection 
Everything you tell me is confidential within the limits of ethical counselling, but there are a limited number of situations whereby I would be obliged to break confidentiality.
By ‘breaking confidentiality’ I mean providing information about my client to another person.  

To Protect my Client from Serious Harm:
If I felt that a client, or third party, was at serious risk of harm then I would consider breaking confidentiality in order to protect that person’s safety or wellbeing.  Where possible I would always try to seek the client’s consent before doing so but, if the situation were serious or urgent enough, I might break confidentiality without consent or even, in very extreme cases, against the client’s wishes.This is not a decision I would ever take lightly and I would expect to be held accountable for that decision.
 
Examples might include a client:
suffering from psychosis and severe mental distress who presents a clear danger to themselves or others announcing their imminent intention to take their own life who discloses information about a young child in a potentially abusive and unsafe relationship.
 
For Legal Reasons
I might have a legal obligation to pass on information about a serious crime if it is disclosed to me in the counselling room.  Crimes where I have no choice but to share information include terrorism and drug trafficking.  In other cases, even if I don’t have an automatic legal obligation to report the crime, I would still have to weight up the ethical implications of breaking confidentiality against the possible harm that keeping such information to myself might cause to others or to society in general.
 
Clients also need to be aware that there are circumstances under which I can be compelled to disclose information about them by the courts or law enforcement authorities.
 
Breaking confidentiality is a serious matter for any therapist and I would only countenance doing so after weighing up all the legal and ethical ramifications.  This would include careful consideration of the BACP Ethical Framework and advice from my supervisor and other relevant, expert legal and professional advisors.
 
 
The content of your emails, calls or online appointments will not be communicated with a third party except for the purposes of supervision of my work. In this instance, your identity will not be revealed, and the presenting issues are discussed in a general context, to help ensure I am working ethically and safely with clients.
I strongly recommend that online clients use an encrypted email server for sending and receiving email exchanges when engaging with counselling, particularly when communicating anything of a personal or sensitive nature. Using an encrypted email server helps to ensure that our communication will not be intercepted by a third party. A free and secure email provider is www.protonmail.com

I recommend that you use a safe, private space where you will not be disturbed by other people during the webcam/ voice only/ telephone counselling session.
I have virus protection software on all devices that are used for client communication, and this software is regularly updated. I recommend installing and using virus protection software on any device you use for online counselling.

In respect of online counselling via email, SMS, and webcam the UK police force and other international government authorities can ask for access to an individual’s email account or synchronous messaging account where there is suspicion of illegal activities. On this basis I am not able to guarantee confidentiality in circumstances which lead to access being granted.

If a complaint is made by a client to my professional body (BACP/NCPS) I reserve the right to breach confidentiality and to use my session notes in order to address any grievances which might occur. Wherever possible you will be informed of this.

At the end of our counselling agreement copies of our exchanges and assessment documents and counselling notes will be stored securely for a period of 7 years as per my insurance agreement.
I am registered as a Data Controller and Data Processor with the ICO and abide by the regulations imposed by such procedures. The procedures in this document have been compiled in relation to GDPR (General Data Privacy Regulations) from May 2018 onwards.

What information is kept? 
As the Data Controller and data Processor I maintain and store brief notes relating to your sessions, alongside contact details.

How is information stored? 
The Client agreement, assessment form and data processing consent you are asked to complete are stored on secure practice management software Splose.
Any electronic contact we have during the process of assessment and ongoing sessions will be deleted from my computer at the end of our agreed work together. Your phone number and the number of your emergency contact may be stored anonymously on my phone and is deleted at the end of the counselling contract. Your information will be securely archived on Splose unless I receive a specific request for deletion.
All session notes are handwritten into the secure Remarkable server through an electronic notebook.
Please indicate your agreement to these data processing procedures by signing the separate data processing consent form.
Guidelines for Emergency Situations
Online counselling cannot provide an emergency service for clients.
In the event of an emergency arising whilst you are engaged in online work or if you were experiencing suicidal thoughts, I would discuss with you the appropriate support that you could access during this period.
If you found yourself in a major crisis and were considering serious self harm it would be vital to get immediate help. This could include contacting your GP and emergency contact
You could also call the Samaritans on :116123 or email jo@samaritans.org (email emergency support). Befrienders Worldwide list sources of support internationally www.befrienders.org/
All personal information disclosed will be kept confidential and not used for any purposes other than a counselling record.
Legal basis and jurisdiction 
This agreement shall be construed and governed in all respects in accordance with the laws of England and Wales and any dispute or differences in relation to this agreement shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.
Social Media 
It is not permissible to publicise the content of our exchanges or share them with a third party using social media or other aspects of personal and public forums.
I do not accept friend requests from clients, nor will I look for you on any social media or online. I will only use the contact details you have provided to keep in touch with you for appointment times, alterations to our meeting arrangements or to forward literature as agreed.
Professional body membership 
I am a registered and accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and The National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS)

Complaints 
Complaints about my practice may be directed to me in the first instance. If you are not satisfied how I have dealt with your complaint you may contact BACP on 01455 883300 option 3 or email ask@bacp.co.uk