Confidentiality policy (For Website)

Throughout your life, information is recorded about you by different organisations. Within the Mentor-Northeast, Mentors need to keep information about your sessions and progress so that if another service provider sees you they know what you have achieved so far. This information is kept securely and access to it is carefully controlled.

Confidentiality is a basic principle in the relationship between mentor and Mentee.

Confidentiality is based on:

Privacy, which is in turn related to the notion of respect for the person - people have a right to decide how information about themselves should be shared with others, and public interest.

A good mentor relationships requires mentee’s to be frank to enable the mentor to plan sessions; if mentee’s could not trust mentors to keep 'secrets', honesty would become less likely and this would undermine a mentor relationship

The basics of confidentiality

Confidentiality policies are in use in most health, social, government and voluntary organisations servicing people with behavioural/emotional problems. A copy of the confidentiality policy should be available for any service provider/clients or his/her family/guardian.

·                 What information is confidential?
Confidential information is any information that may be disclosed in a form that may identify you without your consent.

·                 Can I choose who I want told about me?
Before disclosing any information about yourself, mentor-northeast and other professionals must ask for your consent.

·                 What if I do not agree to information being disclosed?
If you have committed an act of dishonesty that act cannot be stopped and if it is of a nature no one was seriously hurt or of a act where it is not classed as serious mentor-northeast will not disclose the issue to any third parties

If a mentor/supervisor feels such information should be disclosed he/she must still ask your permission and talk through with you the consequences of not disclosing the information.

There are some exceptional circumstances when a mentor/supervisor can disclose information without your consent.

These circumstances are where the health and safety of yourself or others could be at risk.

Within mentor-northeast, risk is defined loosely as risk of death or serious physical harm, either to yourself or others. An example of this would be when you tell your mentor that you are going to steal a car, break into someone’s house and they decide that they should disclose this information to another worker who works closely with you but outside the relationship such as your supervisor (if a crime can be prevented information will be disclosed to the relevant authority’s with or with the consent of the young person)

Confidentiality and professionals outside mentor-northeast

The principles of confidentiality are carried through into almost all services you are likely to use. Each service will have a confidentiality policy which should be made available to you on request. There should be strict rules about disclosure and you should be consulted before any disclosure is made or told if information is going to be disclosed about you without your consent.

Within mentor-northeast, information is not shared between staff. However, if a mentor feels disclosure of findings needs to be to be disclosed to a supervisor the young person shall/needs to be informed.

All efforts will be up held to inform the young person what they are about to disclose may be reported.

It is the responsibility of the mentor to report any discloser by the young person to his/her supervisor if it involves a crime/act about to be committed or harm to the young person or any other person. 

Confidentiality and complaints

A breach of confidentiality can be very upsetting. It can weaken the trust between a mentor and mentee. If you think that there has been a breach of confidentiality it is important to determine if and why a disclosure was made. Firstly you should obtain a copy of the guidelines on confidentiality used by the organisation. You may wish to ask the person who breached your confidentiality under what grounds they did this. An advocate should be able to help you do this.

If you do not get any satisfactory explanation as to why your confidentiality was breached and you feel that relevant guidelines were not followed then you can make a complaint to the organisation in question.

A copy of the complaints procedure should be available from the organisation or a member of staff. An advocate or service provider can help you make a complaint.

National Advice Service Fact sheets

The information on this page is taken from the NAS fact sheet, which you can download in pdf format and print for individual use.

Some amendments have been made to conform to mentor-northeast’s young people services. 

Copied by Peter David Guest (founder mentor-northeast)