Confidentiality notice

It’s important to be aware that our counselling services are offered in the utmost confidence. The legal basis of this confidentiality is available to read below:

1. In becoming a client of the UTS Counselling Services, personal and health information will be collected from you to allow us to provide you with counselling services and ongoing support while you are a client. Information may also be collected from other medical practitioners or parties with your consent.
2. The UTS Counselling Service works as a multidisciplinary team in order to provide the best quality services for you. Clients may consult more than one staff member from the Counselling Service, depending on need and availability.  Client records are accessible to staff within the Counselling Service and to approved administrative staff, including the unit's director, where needed to support continuity of care, enable clinical supervision, review service delivery and complete administrative tasks.
3. Client information may be discussed confidentially within the UTS Counselling Services under supervision and review arrangements in which trained clinicians provide supervision. Information held will also be used to plan and review service delivery.
4. The Student Services Unit's services/programs (Accessibility, Counselling, Financial Assistance, and Safety Caseworker) adopt a collaborative approach to enhance service delivery for students. This approach enables more cohesion between the services when working with students, and a smooth transition and referral between services, minimising the duplication of processes and documentation provision. Staff may be working across various services/programs as part of this collaborative approach. The Student Services Unit shares a single appointment system and, therefore, the details regarding the appointments booked by students.
5. Client information will not be disclosed beyond the above requirements unless:
   1. You have provided consent for information to be shared or disclosed (or consent has been received from a person with legal authority to act on your behalf)
   2. The disclosure is considered necessary to lessen or prevent a serious and imminent risk to life or health of yourself or another person, or a threat to public health or public safety. Where a risk may not be imminent, but there is a threat that may endanger staff or students, information may be disclosed to those responsible for campus safety and wellbeing
   3. We are required by law to disclosure the information (for example, mandatory reporting of a serious crime)
   4. It is disclosed in the course of external supervision or external professional training, and the clinician:
      1. conceals your identity and the identities of any associated parties involved, or
      2. obtains your consent, and gives prior notice to the recipients of the information that they are required to preserve your privacy, and obtains an undertaking from the recipients of the information that they will preserve for your privacy.
6. You can request access to information held about you by contacting the UTS Counselling Services
7. UTS Counselling Services protects client personal and health information. Information collected about you will be stored securely and only retained to satisfy legal retention requirements before it is confidentially destroyed.

If you have any questions regarding privacy and UTS Counselling Services, contact the Head of Counselling on 9514 1177 or Student.Services@uts.edu.au.

These requirements comply with our obligations under the NSW Health Records and Information Privacy Act (2002), and the Australian Psychological Societies’ ethical guidelines (2007).