Confidentiality & Limits of Confidentiality
1. Our commitment to confidentiality
Resilience Psychotherapy treats information disclosed in psychotherapy and counselling as confidential. Information will ordinarily be accessed and used only for legitimate clinical, administrative, governance and legal purposes and only by persons who have an appropriate need to know.
2. Clinical records and internal professional use
Your practitioner will maintain appropriate clinical records. Information may be considered within legitimate clinical governance, professional consultation or supervision arrangements where necessary to support safe and effective practice. Wherever practicable, unnecessary identifying information should be minimised.
3. When information may be disclosed without your consent
There are circumstances in which confidentiality may be limited. Depending on the facts and applicable law, information may be disclosed where:
there is an immediate or serious concern about your safety or the safety of another person and disclosure is reasonably considered necessary to respond to that risk;
there is a safeguarding concern involving a child or another person at risk and reporting, referral or information sharing is required or appropriately justified;
a practitioner is subject to a mandatory reporting obligation;
disclosure is required by law, a court order or another binding legal process;
information is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal rights, or another applicable legal exemption or authorisation applies;
you have authorised the disclosure.
4. Child safeguarding in Hong Kong
Hong Kong's Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance (Cap. 650) is in force. Where a Resilience Psychotherapy practitioner falls within a category of specified professional covered by the Ordinance, that practitioner must make a report as soon as practicable if, in the course of their work, they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a child is suffering serious harm or is at real risk of suffering serious harm, as defined by the Ordinance.
Whether a particular practitioner is a specified professional is determined by the legislation and the practitioner's professional status/functions. Resilience Psychotherapy requires practitioners to understand and comply with any reporting obligations that apply to them.
5. Where possible, we will discuss disclosure
Where it is safe, lawful and clinically appropriate to do so, your practitioner will ordinarily seek to discuss a proposed disclosure with you. There may be circumstances in which prior discussion is not possible or would undermine the purpose of the disclosure.
6. Minimum necessary information
Where information must be disclosed, Resilience Psychotherapy and its practitioners should disclose no more personal or clinical information than is reasonably necessary for the relevant purpose.
7. Third parties, family members and referrers
Being a family member, partner, employer, referrer or person paying for therapy does not automatically entitle someone to receive clinical information. Information will only be shared where appropriately authorised or otherwise justified or required by law.
8. Requests for records
Requests for copies of personal data or clinical records will be handled through Resilience Psychotherapy's data-access procedures rather than by informal release of the complete file.
9. Questions
You are encouraged to ask your practitioner if you are uncertain about confidentiality or how information may be used or disclosed.