Important information for clients

What you need to know 

We meet with thousands of clients every year and we want them to get the most effective help possible. That’s why, if you’re coming as a couple, we’ll talk with you together and individually because this helps us all to work out if Relate is the best place for you to be or whether another resource could be more helpful. Many clients find that those initial conversations help them to make best use of ongoing counselling or to get to other forms of support as quickly as possible.   

Our clients want to talk with us about all sorts of issues. We will always aim to help and support you to explore, understand and potentially make the changes that feel most important to you. Sometimes though, clients coming as a couple or perhaps as a family or group of friends find it very difficult to agree together on what most needs to happen or change as a result of coming to counselling.  Where that’s the case, wherever possible, our practitioners will support you discover if there is any common ground on which you can both agree to work or if different forms of support are more likely to be of greater benefit. 

Reports and client records 

Occasionally Relate is asked by clients or others such as Social Care, solicitors, or the NHS to write reports or express an opinion on the progress made in counselling or other services. We are not normally able to do this because of our duty of confidentiality to our clients, and because Relate practitioners are not trained in the specialist areas of diagnosis or social work assessment.  In addition to this, any notes we take about sessions are extremely brief, not a verbatim account of who said what and they are used only to support continuity from session to session. However, we can in some circumstances, and on receipt of written consent from the client(s) who attended a service, provide the dates and number of sessions attended. We are also sometimes asked by clients, their solicitors, the police, and the courts for access to client records. These are not suitable as evidence in legal proceedings and Relate reserves the right to resist legal requests to produce the records in court. We do this to protect Relate’s duty of confidentiality to all its clients, and to preserve Relate’s national reputation as a provider of confidential counselling and relationship support. 

Unauthorised electronic recording 

In order for you to work safely and effectively with a practitioner, it is important that the privacy of the work is respected. Please, therefore, do not attempt to record your sessions using any device or app. If it is found that recordings have been made covertly, services for the individual responsible will be discontinued immediately and Relate reserves the right to seek legal advice regarding possible further action. 

Cancellation policy 

We charge clients for cancellations made outside the centre’s cancellation period. Your centre will provide you with information about their cancellation policy. Please make sure you have understood it to ensure you do not incur any charges if you need to cancel an appointment.  

Sex therapy 

If you’re coming to us for sex therapy, as part of assessment or ongoing work, your therapist may suggest reading or viewing explicit sexual material to support the work they are undertaking with you. Your practitioner will always discuss this possibility with you first and answer any questions you may have and you can decline their suggestion at any time.  

Confidentiality 

Relationship support is a private and confidential form of help. We hold information about each of our clients and the services they receive in confidence. This means that we will not normally give your name or any information about you to anyone outside the organisation. However, there are exceptional cases where Relate might ethically or legally have to give information to relevant authorities, for example if we had reason to believe that someone is at serious risk of harm or to prevent a miscarriage of justice. We will discuss any proposed disclosure with you unless we believe that to do so could increase the level of risk to you or to someone else. 

Occasionally we receive information from third parties such as Social Care or the police who have become aware that a client is attending Relate. They do not always tell those clients they are passing information to us. We will use any information provided to us from legitimate third parties to help us to determine if providing a service or continuing to provide a service is likely to be beneficial, safe and in the interests of all those affected by the information we have received. We will always endeavour to inform a client if we receive information from a third party unless to do so would be likely to compromise the safety and welfare of the client, third party or Relate staff.