What is Informed Consent

Consent is your agreement with continuing with the present course of action, this starts when you first come to see a therapist and continues throughout your time with us. During your sessions your therapist may offer different suggestions, skills and techniques to try however you always have the last say to whether you try anything or not. You always have the right to say no, and ultimately the right to decide when to stop working with your therapist full stop. We always advise that disengaging with support works best if you give us a session or two warning so we can correctly support you through this process.

Being Informed

While you always have the final say about what your support looks like, it is also very important to be correctly informed about what you are giving your consent for. It is difficult to know if you should provide consent for any particular thing if you are not sure what is involved. Your therapist will do their best to give you as full a description as reasonably possible of the services and support that is being offered, and to provide a space where you can ask questions as you need.

What is Confidentiality

Confidentiality means what happens in your sessions stays between you and your therapist. Anything that you say or do remains private. This is very important to us, and we work hard to make a space that is secure for you for your sessions. This also extends to outside the session, if we happen to see you in public at any time we will be careful to take your lead on how you wish to manage this. You may be comfortable greeting in public, and you also may not. This also may change from day to day, and depending who is around or with you. This is why we will always let you lead with what level is right for you in the moment.

The only times we would consider how to manage confidentiality would be if we considered your safety, or the safety of anyone else was at risk; or if you were unable to care for yourself and we were providing support to people caring for you; or if you had made a complaint which we had to answer; or if we were undertaking supervision. If we considered that confidentiality had become an issue the first thing we would be trying would be to talk with you about what our concerns were and why we wanted to bring in more support for you. The only times that we would not talk with you first would be if we considered that to do so would increase the concerns or risks.

What is Supervision

Supervision is a place for your therapist to talk about their work with another specially trained psychologist or counsellor. Supervision is all about your therapist, and never identifies you. It is mainly used as a place where your therapist can discuss their work, talk through ideas, and gain feedback on how to provide the best support they can. All psychologists and counsellors must have supervision to remain a member of their chosen professional groups such as the Psychologist Board of New Zealand, and the New Zealand Association of Counsellors.

How do you manage Conflicts of Interest

In the first instance your therapist will look to discuss any potential conflict of interest with you directly as they arise. This could be something like having prior knowledge of another person that is mentioned in a session. Your therapist will say something like ‘I will let you know here that I know that person’ and this is done so you can then make your own decision to continue talking about that person or not.

If a conflict of interest becomes an issue that is more serious your therapist will again look to discuss this with you first with the view to trying to resolve the issue in a way that continues to provide you with the best support possible. If this turns out to not be possible your therapist would be looking to other options including finding you another therapist to work with who is better suited to your needs.

Making a Complaint

While we always hope to resolve any issues before you feel that the only option is to make a complaint, this option is always available for you to use.

Both the Psychologist Board of New Zealand and the New Zealand Association of Counsellors have specific complaint procedures that you can access through their respective websites, which are listed below. You will be listened to with respect and supported through the complaint process which is then investigated.

If you feel more comfortable with an independent service the Nationwide Health and Disability Advocacy Service found at www.advocacy.org.nz is designed specifically for this purpose.

Where to find more information

Here is some of the main law, best practise documents and code of ethics that support and guide the services that we offer

Legislation and services relevant to therapy

Human Rights Act 1993 www.legislation.govt.nz

Privacy Act 2020 www.privacy.org.nz

www.legislation.govt.nz

Office of the Privacy Commissioner www.privacy.org.nz

Health Information Privacy Code 2020 found under ‘Privacy Act 2020’ within the www.privacy.org.nz website

Health and Disabilities Commissioner www.hdc.org.nz

Nationwide Health and Disability Advocacy Service www.advocacy.org.nz

Professional Bodies and Codes of Ethics

Psychologist Board of New Zealand www.psychologistboard.org.nz

Code of Ethics found under ‘Resources’

New Zealand Association of Counsellors www.nzac.org.nz

Code of Ethics found under ‘Ethics & Concerns’