Confidentiality & Consent

Confidentiality 

All information provided by you and your child will be kept confidential to anyone else outside of the clinic (except for his/her clinical supervisor, who is bound by strict confidentiality guidelines). It is advisable to share information about your assessment/therapy with your General Practitioner and/or referrer and can sometimes be useful to share this with a third party (e.g. school, employer). This is something that would not be acted upon without your consent.   

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Confidentiality will be only be broken if the psychologist or practitioner has reason to believe that the client is at risk of harm from others, or causing, or will cause, either himself/herself or other people or their property harm. In these instances, they are obliged to share that information.  Every effort will be made to discuss this with the client in the first instance.  

 

 

Parental Consent 

White Oaks believes that the process of seeking out therapeutic support should be positive and supportive throughout, and that any diagnosis or support follows a comprehensive and thorough assessment where multiple informants are involved. This process can unfortunately be undermined if a parent who have parental responsibility and contact with their child, does not consent or is not involved in the assessment. It is important that all views and perspectives are given and respected, to increase the integrity of any diagnosis or support, and to prevent any possibility of it being questioned in the future.   

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We appreciate that when parents are separated, involving both parties can be challenging. We would like to involve both parents in the most appropriate and sensitive way for your family and for the child or young person.   

It is our policy at White Oaks, that both parents with parental responsibility for a child or young person will need to be aware of and consent to the assessment and therapeutic input.  We will ask for details of both parents ahead of the assessment. We are happy to contact both parents to discuss the assessment in more detail so as to gain consent.   

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We would like to involve both parents in the assessment if possible or appropriate. This can be done in a number of ways:  

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Before the assessment:  

• We will ask both parents to complete the pre-assessment form and associated questionnaires.   

 

During the assessment: 

• Both parents attend the parental assessment together.  

• One parent attends the parental interview and the other emails to say that they do not wish to take part.  

• One parent attends the assessment and the provides their views via written communication).  

• Parents attend the assessment at different times (please note this will incur a fee which will be discussed before commencing the assessment).  

 

During therapeutic input: 

• Following the assessment, there will be a discussion regarding how to best involve and communicate with both parents as part of this process.