Student Counselling and Wellbeing service agreement and privacy notice
All students who wish to receive Wellbeing, Counselling and Mental Health Services are asked to confirm they have read and consent to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement outlined below.
This Agreement describes our services and outlines our mutual commitment to each other, for us as a Service Provider and for you as Service User. Consent is required before completion of our online registration form, and we are unable to offer services without this consent.
Privacy notice
In order to provide Counselling and Wellbeing Services, we will keep a record of our communications and appointments with you. Student Counselling and Wellbeing is one of the University’s support services provided to you as a student of the University. Your information will generally be collected and used in accordance with the University’s Student Privacy Notice. Please do take time to read this Notice.
The University of Leeds is the registered Data Controller, the Student Counselling and Wellbeing Service is the Data Owner and will determine how your data is processed.
Our records will comprise the personal data that you provide to us in the registration form and any subsequent questionnaires, and the notes made by our staff. Records are used for the purpose of providing support with issues that may impact your studies or capacity to engage with University life. The data will be held securely (paper files held in locked cabinets in locked offices, electronic files held only on secure, university owned and approved Drives), in accordance with Data Protection laws. All staff receive regular data protection training. The Student Counselling and Wellbeing Service produces anonymised and aggregated data for the purposes of service analysis, service improvement, audit and research. Your data will be held by the Student Counselling and Wellbeing Service for three years from the end of your contact with the Service and after the three year period, your personal data will be removed and destroyed.
You have a right of access to the notes held in your record and to request that your records are amended or destroyed. If at any time after the end of a counselling, wellbeing or mental health support intervention you wish to withdraw your consent for the Counselling Service to hold your personal data, please email scw@leeds.ac.uk and your data will be removed and destroyed. If you ask for data to be removed during a counselling, wellbeing or mental health intervention, we will not be able to proceed with any further support as note-taking is an important part of our professional practice. Please contact scw@leeds.ac.uk for further information about access to your records.
Occasionally, we may request to record a counselling session, for the training purposes of our staff. We will always ask your permission before doing this and we fully support your right to refuse.
Confidentiality and data sharing
The Student Counselling and Wellbeing Service provides a confidential service. Wellbeing, mental health and counselling practitioners use a team approach in order to provide the best quality services to students, and where necessary practitioners within the team may need to liaise to discuss the best possible support for a student. These discussions are specific and limited. With regard to sharing personal information outside of Student Counselling and Wellbeing, this will be rare. We would only disclose your personal information, without your consent, under the following circumstances:
a) If there is good reason to believe that you or someone else may be at serious risk of harm we may disclose information about you. Unless the situation is an emergency, or we think otherwise inappropriate, we will always try to discuss things with you and obtain your consent before making the disclosure.
b) We may be legally bound to disclose personal information on certain occasions e.g. under a Court Order or under the general law, such as under the Safeguarding and the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults Act, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and the Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering Act.
Referral for additional support: There may be occasions when you ask us to pass your personal data (name, email address) to an external agency for purposes of onward referral, for example if you would like us to arrange an appointment with your GP. We will always consult with you about the appropriateness of an onward referral and seek your specific consent to communicate with that agency.
Mitigating Circumstances evidence, Fitness to Study: You may ask us to share information about your wellbeing with your academic school or other University service or department, for example you may request evidence from the Student Counselling and Wellbeing Service as part of a Mitigating Circumstances or Fitness to Study process. We will always seek your specific consent to share information and agree the detail of any information to be shared.
Clinical supervision is the process by which our staff members receive the advice and guidance of another senior practitioner and our engagement in supervision is an important part of our professional Code of Conduct. Your personal details are never shared in clinical supervision; the purpose is to support the practitioner in their effective professional practice.
Subject to the above exceptions we don’t discuss students’ personal information (including those relating to your attendance) with parents, partners, guardians or tutors unless we have your permission to do so.
Disability support
Before releasing your personal information to others for the purposes of the University providing you with further support relating to a disability, we would first seek your consent. Please be aware this means that if you don’t give your consent the University will not be able to provide the necessary support.
Evaluation and feedback
In order to help us monitor the effectiveness of our work here, we may ask you to complete a questionnaire at the beginning of therapy or support, and another at the end of any support you are offered. These may range between clinical screening and research tools such as CORE-10, PHQ-9 and GAD-7 or the Student Counselling and Wellbeing feedback and evaluation form.
After your final appointment, we will normally send you an evaluation form which invites you to comment on your experience of Student Counselling and Wellbeing. We greatly value the feedback you are able to give us which we use to inform future practice.
Complaints
If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our service, we encourage you to discuss this in the first instance with the practitioner you have met with. You may also contact the Assistant Head of Student Support (Counselling and Wellbeing) or Head of Student Support, who can be contacted via scw@leeds.ac.uk or 0113 343 4107 or the following:
Head of Student Support: Chris Warrington, c.j.warrington@adm.leeds.ac.uk
Information about complaints procedures in the University can be found in:
Student Counselling and Wellbeing is a BACP Accredited service. If you are unable to resolve any counselling related concerns by talking to staff, please see BACP's complaints procedure.
You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about the way in which we process your personal data. Please see the ICO website.
On receipt of a complaint relating to the Student Counselling and Wellbeing service, consent will be sought from the complainant to release information relevant to the investigation of the complaint. If this permission is not provided it may impact on the ability of the University and/or Information Commissioner’s Office and/or Office of the Independent Adjudicator to conduct a satisfactory investigation.
Ethics governing the work of counsellors
Counsellors abide by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Ethical Framework, or adhere to the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) Code of Ethics. For more information, visit their website.
The purpose of the BACP Framework is to establish and maintain standards for counsellors and to inform and protect members of the public seeking and using their services. A copy of the Framework is available from BACP at BACP House, 15 St John’s Business House, Lutterworth, LE17 4HB, 01455 883300.
Respect
Staff within Student Counselling and Wellbeing aim to provide a professional, respectful and caring environment in which to support the emotional wellbeing of clients from all sections of the student population. In keeping with this, we expect users of the Centre to conduct themselves in a respectful way and to abide by University regulations.