Safety, Privacy & Complaints
The Well4U Counselling Service acknowledges that your privacy is very important. We take care to protect your confidentiality in accordance with British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) guidelines. These guidelines serve to protect your confidential material and ensure the integrity and professionalism of your Counsellor. You can take a look at these here (insert hyperlink to bacp info sheet on what to expect from counsellor?)
Fair Collection of Personal Information
Before Well4U Online Sessions begin, the your basic personal information may be collected, for example client name, age, email address, messenger ID, or telephone number as well as brief details of your issue. You have the option to remain anonymous.
The Well4U Counselling Service will only collect information that is considered necessary for the effectiveness of online counselling, psychotherapy and coaching. The Counsellor may keep anonymised information about their current and former clients stored in a secure file in order to keep a record of their sessions. These files can only be accessed by the Counsellor and no one else.
All email accounts are double password protected and fully encrypted. If you send an email to your Counsellor’s email address, only they will have access to it.
For our Skype and Instant Chat sessions, we use special software that encrypts and authenticates messages as well as file transfers, making it the most comprehensive instant messenger security add-on available.
All phones and computers, or storage devices required to conduct or aid counselling sessions have anti-virus and/or double password protect locks that only your Counsellor has the password for.
Records are kept secure in line with BACP ethical guidelines.
Use & Disclosure
The WELL4U counselling service may ask for and collect information which is necessary to monitor the outcome of sessions in order to protect the safety and wellbeing of every client. Please see the other sections on these pages to see exactly how this information may be used.
If we receive a subpoena from a judge in the UK, your counsellor will be bound by British Law to release your records. It is therefore important to let your counsellor know of any impending court case.
Confidentiality
The WELL4U counselling service takes confidentiality very seriously. Discussions during counselling sessions will be strictly confidential. The only exceptions to this are;
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If there is a risk to self or others
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If there is information regarding money laundering or acts of terrorism
If requested, we will provide copies of your records, if we have enough information to identify you.
If you would like to see your records then please write to;
Mark Southall, Caldicott Guardian
Prohealth UK
Bourne House
Watling Street
Weeford
Lichfield
Staffordshire.
WS14 OPJ
TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE FOR REGISTRATION
By using this site, I agree to the following terms and conditions, which may be updated from time to time;
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to be polite in all communications with Prohealth UK and other site members.
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not to disclose any personal contact information on the forums, in blogs or items submitted for upload.
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to not disclose my password to others and to provide a valid email address upon registration.
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to not give false information.
All rights reserved; no part of this website, including information, images, photos, trademarks and logos may be copied, republished, posted, broadcast or reproduced in any form without permission from Prohealth UK.
Documents may be downloaded and used for personal, non-commercial use only.
Ethical Statement
Ethical Statement
All of our qualified therapists are members of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and as such adhere to the ethical standards and guidelines laid down in their Code of Practice. All of the work undertaken by any member of our team is also completed in accordance with these ethical standards.
Anonymity
The Well4U Counselling Service will provide an anonymous service where you will have the option of being able to use another name for the purpose of using Well4U or for telephone counselling. You may use a name you feel comfortable with, the choice is up to the individual client.
Information you give us will be stored securely in an encrypted format including your real contact details if you chose to give us them. If you receive counselling from us, we will explain to you that all of our counsellors receive supervision where they discuss client work. However, all details are kept anonymous during the supervision and names and identifying criteria are not discussed. As part of their ongoing training and development, our counsellors sometimes have to write case studies for their courses or training sessions. Whenever a case study is written, we never use the username a young person registers with. We change them to a made up one so the new funders and the training course would never be able to identify anyone from what we write.
On WELL4U we are asked by the people who pay for the service, the funders, to provide them with anonymous monthly case studies of our work with young people. The funders use these case studies to see how well WELL4U is doing in supporting you.
Need Help?
Sometimes getting extra help when you are struggling is really useful. On WELL4U we are able to refer you to services in your area that could give you a helping hand for example drug and alcohol services, young carers groups etc.
If you need help we would ask you for your contact details so that we can make an appropriate referral.
Please be aware that if you write on the message boards or blogs and we are concerned about what you have written, this will be noted in your confidential case notes file which can be accessed by all members of the WELL4U counselling team.
Data Quality
The Well4U Counselling Service will always ensure personal information is gathered accurately. The Well4U Counselling Service will only use your email address for the purpose of Well4U counselling. Your email address will be used as a form of contact in order to book Well4U and telephone appointments and to receive information about our services. The Well4U Counselling Service may email you to inform you of special offers and important information about the site and the service.
The Well4U Counselling Service uses a secure system, protecting the information that is collected by the client. All email and contact forms are encrypted. All telephone calls are confidential.
Your personal information and contact details will not be shared. If you use the telephone counselling service, you will only be contacted by telephone at pre-booked times. Your telephone number will never be shared with anyone and you will never be contacted by phone at any time other than for pre-arranged sessions.
Any personal data retained by your Counsellor is kept in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and the parent company which owns Well4U is registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).
Cookies
A cookie is a small file which is stored on your web browser (Firefox, safari etc.). It can do things like track the time you spend on a website, or makes sure your username and password match up when you sign in.
Most internet browsers allow you to choose whether or not to accept cookies. . You can remove cookies from your browser, or prevent them being set, but this may make some web sites unusable. But please remember, if you don't allow cookies on the Well4U website, some things, like logging in, might not work properly.
When you join WELL4U.com we put 2 cookies on your browser which do the following;
1. makes the web site nicer because it remembers your preferences e.g. wallpaper
2. helps us to link your user ID and IP address to a particular device.