Confidentiality & Record Keeping in Counselling & Psychotherapy

Tim Bond is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Bristol and Visiting Professor to the University of Malta. He has a longstanding commitment to researching and writing about professional ethics for the talking therapies and promoting mental well-being. He is currently a consultant to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy on professional ethics and standards, a member of the Ethics Committee for the British Psychological Society and the Executive Council of the International Association for Counselling. He is a registered member of BACP and provides counselling supervision and training workshops. Dr Barbara Mitchels,  is a practising psychotherapist and a Fellow of BACP. A retired solicitor, Barbara ,  combines the professions of law and therapy in CPD workshops, providing a specialist consultancy service for counselling professionals and the BACP and contributions to the BACP’s Good Practice in Action Legal Guidance series. She led the writing of the Ethical Guidelines for Research in the Counselling Professions (BACP 2018a), and other recent  publications include Children and Vulnerable Witnesses in Court: A Practice Handbook (Wiley, Simmonds and Hill 2018).

Confidentiality and the law
Recording confidences
Confidentiality as a legal entitlement – clients’ perspective
Confidentiality as legal responsibility – obligations of the therapist
Record keeping and the law
Record keeping – basic responsibilities
Data protection, freedom of information and technology
How long do we keep records?
Confidentiality and disclosures: information sharing
Sharing information between professionals
Sharing information in supervision and training
Sharing information in research and audit
Confidentiality and disclosures: policy, practice and procedural issues
Developing agency policy and practice and evaluating organisational policies on confidentiality and record keeping
Mental capacity, vulnerable adults and consent
Children, capacity and consent
Victims, and pre-trial therapy with vulnerable adults and children
Practice dilemmas: scenarios on confidentiality and disclosures for reflection and discussion
Responding to dilemmas - ethical and legal practice
Glossary