Policies & FAQs

Cancellation Policy / Missed Appointments +

Your appointment time is reserved just for you. A late cancellation or missed visit leaves a hole in the counsellor’s day that could have been filled by another client. As such, I require 48 business hours notice for any cancellations or changes to your appointment. Clients who provide less than 48 business hours notice will be charged the full amount of the appointment.

Extended Health / Insurance +

Sessions with Registered Clinical Counsellors are covered by some insurance providers. Please check with your plan provider to determine coverage. Unless other arrangements are made, clients are responsible for paying me directly and are independently responsible for claiming repayment from their insurance provider. Some insurance companies require a standard diagnosis to be made from a specific manual. I will confer with you before providing such information.

Confidentiality +

Communication between a counsellor and client is confidential. No information will be disclosed to third parties without the consent of the client. However, if the counsellor judges that the client or someone else is at risk of harm, or if disclosure is ordered by the courts, the counsellor will disclose the required information to meet her obligation under the law.

Electronic Communication / Telehealth +

There are inherent risks in communicating electronically, including the risk that emails and their contents could be seen by persons other than the intended recipient. My email system is password protected but not encrypted and the I cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information transmitted electronically. Clients who provide their email address and who engage in email communication with me acknowledge the above, agree to communicate electronically, and agree not to hold me responsible in the event any such communication is viewed or accessed by a third party or parties.

This Social Media Policy was copied and slightly adapted for my own use from the Social Media Policy of Keely Kolmes, Psy.D., who licenced it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, making it available to other mental health professionals.

This document outlines my office policies related to the use of Social Media. Please read it to understand how I conduct myself on the Internet as a mental health professional and how you can expect me to respond to various interactions that may occur between us on the Internet.

If you have any questions about anything within this document, I encourage you to bring them up when we meet. As new technology develops and the Internet changes, there may be times when I need to update this policy. If I do so, I will notify you in writing of any changes and make sure you have a copy of the updated policy.

Friending

I do not accept friend or contact requests from current or former clients on any social networking site (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc). I believe that adding clients as friends or contacts on these sites can compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. I also do not interact with clients on social networking sites. If you need to contact me between sessions, the best way to do so is by phone, or by email. If you have questions about this, please bring them up when we meet and we can talk more about it.

Following

I may occasionally post articles or materials related to wellness and psychology on my website or Instagram. I have no expectation that you as a client will want to follow my website or Instagram. Comments have been disabled on my website. However, if you use an easily recognizable name on Instagram and I happen to notice that you’ve followed me there, we may briefly discuss it and its potential impact on our working relationship. My primary concern is your privacy. You are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow me.  I only follow other health professionals on Instagram and I do not follow current or former clients. My reasoning is that I believe casual viewing of clients’ online content outside of the therapy hour can create confusion in regard to whether it’s being done as a part of your treatment or to satisfy my personal curiosity. In addition, viewing your online activities without your consent and without our explicit arrangement towards a specific purpose could potentially have a negative influence on our working relationship. If there are things from your online life that you wish to share with me, please bring them into our sessions where we can view and explore them together, during the therapy hour.  

Use of Search Engines

It is not a regular part of my practice to search for clients on Google or Facebook or other search engines. Extremely rare exceptions may be made during times of crisis. If I have a reason to suspect that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with me via our usual means (coming to appointments, or phone contact) there might be an instance in which using a search engine (to find you, find someone close to you, or to check on your recent status updates) becomes necessary as part of ensuring your welfare. These are unusual situations and if I ever resort to such means, I will fully document it and discuss it with you when we next meet.

Business Review Sites

You may find my psychology practice on sites such as Yelp, Google, Yahoo Local, Bing, or other places which list businesses. Some of these sites include forums in which users rate their providers and add reviews. Many of these sites comb search engines for business listings and automatically add listings regardless of whether the business has added itself to the site. If you should find my listing on any of these sites, please know that my listing is NOT a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement from you as my client.

The British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) Standard for Promoting and Advertising Services states, “An RCC should never solicit testimonials, expressly or by implication, from clients or other persons who, because of their particular circumstances, may be vulnerable to undue influence” (BCACC Code of Ethical Conduct and Standards of Clinical Practice and Guidelines for Registered Clinical Counsellors, 2011).

You have a right to express yourself on any site you wish. But due to confidentiality, I cannot respond to any review on any of these sites whether it is positive or negative. I urge you to take your own privacy as seriously as I take my commitment of confidentiality to you. You should also be aware that if you are using these sites to communicate indirectly with me about your feelings about our work, there is a good possibility that I may never see it.

If we are working together, I hope that you will bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly into the therapy process. This can be an important part of therapy, even if you decide we are not a good fit. None of this is meant to keep you from sharing that you are in therapy with me wherever and with whomever you like.

Confidentiality means that I cannot tell people that you are my client and my Ethics Code prohibits me from requesting testimonials. But you are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that I’m your therapist or how you feel about the treatment I provided to you, in any forum of your choosing.  

If you do choose to write something on a business review site, I hope you will keep in mind that you may be sharing personally revealing information in a public forum. I urge you to create a pseudonym that is not linked to your regular email address or friend networks for your own privacy and protection. 

Location-Based Services

If you used location-based services on your mobile phone, you may wish to be aware of the privacy issues related to using these services. I do not place my practice as a check-in location on various sites such as Foursquare, Facebook, etc. However, if you have GPS tracking enabled on your device, it is possible that others may surmise that you are a therapy client due to your location.