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CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT (please read the exceptions included in this statement.)

• Statement
• Exceptions

It is fundamental to our belief that anything you tell us by way of the counselling therapy encounter should be completely confidential and be held in the strictest confidence. Further, we believe that in meeting your needs we should respect your privacy and integrity and accordingly only seek information from you or about you, your family or others in pursuit of your therapeutic good. Accordingly any details which may be kept by way of hand written notes, computer processed documents or electronic recording will be retained within our organisation in such a way as to be anonymous and not individually identifiable. Our stance respects individuality and difference and is non-judgemental, recognising you as the expert on your own needs, wishes and way of being. As we believe that therapy is a collaborative journey all notes and records can be made available to you throughout.

We follow ethical guidelines as set out by the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. Where we feel that it would be beneficial to you and to our work together we may refer to supervision. Supervision is one of the keystones of counselling where issues raised in case work can be confidentially and anonymously discussed with another experienced counsellor to help provide further insight and support.

No information about you or any other person will be shared commercially with any other organisation.

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Exceptions

No personal information will be shared with anyone else, without your permission, unless particular and exceptional legal situations arise. For example:

• Legislation requires that where another person, particularly a child, may be at risk we inform the authorities at once.
• Knowledge of some forms of very serious crime, such as terrorism and money-laundering must, by law, be reported to the police authorities.

We usually request details of your G.P. (Doctor's name, Practice name and telephone number). We reserve the right to contact your G.P. or surgery should you be taken ill, or seem to us to be very severely distressed or have indicated that you are likely to harm yourself or another person.

We will request you to provide an emergency telephone number and contact name. This information will only be used in the greatest of emergencies and its use must remain at our discretion.

In pursuit of improving the knowledge and expertise of all counsellors, and of benefiting future clients, clinical work is sometimes subject to peer-review in professional journals. The identity of any case or individual is rendered anonymous before submission for publication and as we may use a composite of several cases we may not always be able to request individual permissions. Accordingly you should advise in writing if this is not acceptable to you before counselling begins.

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