Clients have a right to expect that what they disclose to a professional will not be revealed to a third party. This is significantly different to a situation where a friend requests a secret be kept. With a friend, your loyalty to them and desire to maintain the friendship will determine whether in fact you keep their secret. All information from, or communication with, a client, within a therapeutic relationship, irrespective of the content, must be kept confidential (Welfel, 2013). Consequently, confidentiality is essential to maintain trust and a working alliance within a therapeutic relationship (Parsons, 2001).
For example, ethics committees in South Carolina (Opinion ) and Iowa (Iowa Ethics Opinion 96-1 1996) both concluded that the use of email by lawyers to communicate with clients breached confidentiality unless precautions were taken to prevent interception, or client consent was obtained acknowledging the risks of using of email. WinIRC is a lightweight, fast IRC client for Windows 10. It's designed to allow you to chat on IRC easily, whether you're on a phone, a tablet or a desktop. WinIRC has a number of great features that make chatting on irc easier, including: - Inline media viewing: Images, youtube videos and tweets can be viewed inline without leaving the client!
According to Bond (2010) confidentiality protects clients by giving them control over how the information they reveal is used. Bond (2010) explains the meaning of confidentiality in terms of trust:
One meaning of confidentiality is ‘strong trust’ (from the Latin con-fidere). High levels of trust are necessary to create the conditions in which clients can strive for the levels of personal truthfulness necessary to address the issues that are causing them concern. It requires corresponding levels of trustworthiness on the part of the counsellor. For these reasons, protecting confidentiality is a high ethical priority in counselling and requires sound ethical reasons for confidentiality to be curtailed in any way. (p. 155)
Bond (2010) reported that the historical commitment to confidentiality became apparent when in 1965 a psychoanalyst, Anne Haymen, refused to disclose her client’s material even though the client consented to the disclosure. Anne insisted that a client’s dependency on her analyst prevented a fully informed consent whereby the client may feel obligated to provide the consent and may be unconscious to their own motivation in providing that consent. Anne appeared in court in response to the subpoena and was prepared for the consequences. She hired a barrister to defend her in the event that she was held in contempt of the court and thus charged. In this case the judge used the discretion that the law allowed and decided that Anne’s conscience required her to protect her client’s information at any cost.
Agreements on confidentiality with clients provide them with a level of security in understanding how their disclosure will be safeguarded and whether discussed or not clients will expect confidentiality from their counsellor (Kampf, McSherry, Ogloff & Rothschild, 2009).
It may seem obvious that clients require confidentiality for counselling to be beneficial, but confidentiality is not absolute and pressures to breach confidentiality indicate that it may not be easy to guarantee. Therefore the role of the counsellor includes that as “custodian of sensitive client personal information, i.e. in deciding to maintain confidentiality or to disclose client information” (Tribe & Morrissey, 2005).
Students sometimes think that confidentiality is held in both directions, meaning that the client is also bound to confidentiality. This is not the case. Clients are free to discuss any aspect of their counselling (including everything their counsellor says) with any other person they wish
Textual 7 0 8 – Lightweight Irc Client Confidentiality Consent
Why is confidentiality necessary?
Understanding the need for confidentiality, as well as the contexts for breaching confidentiality and the associated consequences, provides a basis for professionals to:
The right of the client to confidentiality acknowledges the power imbalance intrinsic to the counsellor/coach-client relationship, the trust that has been placed in them and, importantly, the client’s vulnerability (Kampf et al., 2009).
Kampf et al. (2009) outline the key imperatives (in addition to the legal above) for the application of confidentiality:
What are the professional and public interests regarding the need for confidentiality?
Professionals themselves as well as the public are also stakeholders and benefit from the maintenance of confidentiality in therapeutic relationships.
Professional interests
Professionals at times discuss client details with colleagues. Sometimes this might be in formal supervision. Other times it may simply be a need to debrief a particularly difficult case, to get advice on an ethical issue, to report a difficult experience, to contribute to a collegial atmosphere or to provide some humour to a particularly stressful day. How ought professionals manage these normal impulses to share?
Welfel (2013) provides the following advice:
The first consideration must be for the dignity and welfare of the client. The best standard for determining whether informal information sharing with colleagues is ethical is to ask whether the client would understand the comment to be a professional consultation if he or she heard it… Second, even if the identity of the particular client is not revealed, the client may feel humiliated by a non-professional disclosure and be less willing to disclose personal information in future sessions. Thus, client information should be shared only within a formal consultation environment, and all sharing should respect the dignity of the individual. (p. 115)
Furthermore, Welfel (2013) recommends that professionals place themselves in the client’s position to determine if a disclosure is necessary, respectful and appropriate.
Mental health professionals are genuinely interested and care about the wellbeing of their clients and therefore wish to maintain confidentiality as this prioritises their clients’ best interests (Kampf et al., 2009).
Mental health professionals also pride themselves on their integrity and ability to make ethically sound decisions. Maintaining confidentiality provides professionals with a platform to foster their ethical decision-making and uphold their integrity (Kampf et al., 2009).
The reputation of the counselling industry is also affected by the maintenance of confidentiality. Professionals who take confidentiality seriously advance the reputation of counselling and provide important role modelling to students and those new to counselling.
Bond (2010) provides guidelines for maintaining confidentiality within settings where multiple professionals have access to a client or their records. Within a team approach Bond recommends:
Bond (2010) also recommends that organisations follow the Caldicott principles for information sharing. The six Caldicott principles are:
As mentioned in Section 2, clients need to be given the opportunity to provide informed consent regarding what information is shared, for what purpose and with whom it is being shared.
The public interest
Not only does the reputation of industries benefit from the maintenance of confidentiality, trust of professional services is paramount to people being willing to approach those services for support. If a service cannot provide a guarantee of confidentiality (even if not absolute) then people may be deterred from seeking help and consequently the general mental health of the public is affected.
As mentioned earlier, the maintenance of confidentiality also supports clients’ autonomy, promotes beneficence and reduces the risk of harm to clients. It is essential that as confidentiality is increasingly seen as a human right, mental health services managers provide a level of confidentiality that meets the expected standard in general health settings. This ensures that the right to equal treatment and non-discrimination of confidentiality is upheld (Kampf et al., 2009).
There is also the court’s concept of “public interest” which refers to what is in the best interest of the greater public good and “holds decisive authority” (Tribe & Morrissey, 2005, p. 65). Though confidentiality is key to the public interest, it is also this authority that may justify or require the disclosure of confidential documents in order to protect the client, their family, the professional or any other party deemed to be at risk (Tribe & Morrissey, 2005).
Confidentiality and practice contexts
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Certain settings and situations create unique challenges for the maintenance of confidentiality. Below we consider some of the circumstances that may challenge confidential practices.
These circumstances are influenced by a significant variation in settings or practices. The setting might be one of the below:
The setting in which you work may provide services to a specific client group. This may include cancer survivors, people with anorexia, people with a disability, carers, survivors of child sexual assault, people with issues regarding drugs, alcohol or gambling, people in grief or many others.
Circumstances where there may be a pressure to breach the confidentiality of a client are also many and varied and may include:
Using technology and phones
Technology or telecommunications may also present opportunities where professionals may not be aware of the potential for a breach of confidentiality.
Textual 7 0 8 – Lightweight Irc Client Confidentiality Act
The confidentiality of an individual could easily be compromised in any situation even where there is no live video evidence of an individual. Someone with access to another’s login details could enter a group online network. It is therefore recommended that counsellors not engage in online group counselling (Bond, 2010).
Remley and Herlily (2010) offer guidelines and suggestions for protecting the privacy of clients when using a telephone or mobile phone:
Telephone:
Messages:
Using faxes and emails also provides challenges to maintaining confidentiality for clients. It is necessary to ensure that these communications arrive in an environment that protects the client’s confidentiality (Corey, Corey & Callanan, 2011).
Frankel (2000, as cited in Corey et al., 2011) insists that email counselling services must satisfy the following conditions:
Additionally Corey et al. (2011) provide the following cautions for using email:
The use of technology for communication is ubiquitous and most often used in an automatic manner. Professionals must be mindful of the ways in which confidentiality and privacy may be compromised when using technology. It is necessary and wise to establish acceptable frameworks for communication and use preventative ways to guarantee that clients understand the risks of various forms of communication and provide consent (Corey, et al., 2011).
References
Bond, T. (2010). Standards and ethics for counselling in action (3rd ed.). London, England: Sage.
Corey, G., Corey, M., & Callanan, P. (2011). Issues and ethics in the helping professions (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Featherstone, T. (2012, April). A matter of public trust. Company Director, 15–19.
Ghadar, F. (2007, January/February). Governance: The rising role of NGOs. Industrial Management, 8–12.
Jenkins, P. (2010). Having confidence in therapeutic work with young people: Constraints and challenges to confidentiality. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 38(3), 263–274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2010.483128
Kampf, A., McSherry, B., Ogloff, J., & Rothschild, A. (2009). Confidentiality for mental health professionals: A guide to ethical and legal principles. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Academic Press.
Textual 7 0 8 – Lightweight Irc Client Confidentiality Example
McSherry, B. (2006). Access to confidential medical records by courts and tribunals: The inapplicability of the doctrine of public interest immunity. Journal of Law and Medicine, 14,15–19.
Parsons, R. (2001). Informed consent. In R. Parsons (Ed.), The ethics of professional practice, (pp. 101–118). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Tribe, R. & Morrissey, J. (2005). Handbook of professional and ethical practice – for psychologists, counsellors & psychotherapists. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
Welfel, E. R. (2013). Ethics in counseling and psychotherapy: Standards, research and emerging issues (4th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Younggren, J., & Harris, E. (2008). Can you keep a secret? Confidentiality in psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, 64(5), 589–600.
Related Posts:
By: Mentor Research Institute
Revised; June 20, 2000
Internet: www.OregonCounseling.Org
Confidentiality is not absolute and there are circumstances in which information can or must be released. These exceptions will vary depending on the type of professional you work with.
Under certain circumstances certain information may or must be revealed or released to others. The following are examples of exceptions that may apply:
Textual 7 0 8 – Lightweight Irc Client Confidentiality Requirements
If you have any questions, concerns, or confusion regarding your rights to confidentiality, or any potential exception, you should discuss this with your counselor or therapist. Your counselor or psychotherapist should provide you with a written statement regarding their policy and the law pertaining to their profession. Licensed Counselors and Social Workers are required by state law to provide a comprehensive statement of their services and policies.
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