On this page we explain how Advice and Counselling collects and uses personal data of its users, and what our Confidentiality procedure is. Your personal data will be processed in accordance with the Queen Mary Data Protection Policy and this information below.
We ask for your consent to record and use your personal data. It is essential for us to keep details about you and your appointments with us so that we are able to offer you the best support. When you contact us for the first time we create an electronic case file for you. Using your name or Student ID number we access information about you from MySIS, including contact details, age, gender, course details, nationality and fee status. Ethnicity and disability information is only used for statistical monitoring. We keep information on the number of appointments attended too. The information we hold about you is kept confidentially - please see our confidentiality policy below.
When you attend an appointment, we will keep confidential case notes. These notes record information such as:
If you do not want us to keep notes about you, we will only be able to offer you one appointment. This is because our professional requirements make it essential for us to keep confidential notes on clients. If we cannot offer you the sessions that you need, we will refer you to another service or agency. At any time, you have a right to withdraw your consent. If you wish to do so, please contact us, but please note that this will mean that we will not be able to continue to offer the service you have requested.
You have a right to see the personal data that we keep about you. If your notes contain references to other people, this information will not usually be available to you, as protection is also granted to third parties. When we show you your notes, we will talk to you about what is in them and why. Changes to notes cannot normally be made. If you want to see your notes, please ask the staff member that you usually see or if you are no longer a client of the service, please email welfare@qmul.ac.uk
For the purpose of service development issues, the Advice and Counselling Service keeps statistical records on gender, ethnicity, disability, number of appointments, and on the kind of advice or counselling provided. Any reports for Queen Mary use or external agencies are made anonymous and do not contain clients’ details.
In line with legal requirements, Welfare Advice case files are kept for six years and Counselling files for five years from the date of the last interaction. After this time they are deleted from our system and any physical documents we may have are securely shredded. For further information, including on your rights, please see the Queen Mary privacy notice and/or contact the Data Protection Officer.
The Advice and Counselling Service works within a strict code of confidentiality so that any information about you and your contact with us is kept confidential to the Service (1). The fact that you have attended appointments at the Advice and Counselling Service, and anything discussed during appointments, will not be passed to anyone outside the Service without your permission (2). This includes any information that you may give us regarding your immigration status in the UK. The Advice and Counselling Service is separate from all other departments at Queen Mary who have a duty to report on students’ attendance and compliance with the immigration rules to the UK Home Office. In some rare situations, we may need to break confidentiality even when we are unable to get your permission to do so. These are when:
In these situations, we will always attempt to contact you first to get your permission to pass on the information, or talk to you about passing the information on yourself. If this is not possible, we might pass on the information ourselves, but only in the very rare and limited circumstances listed above.
If you have agreed to us communicating with someone outside the Service about you, we will agree with you first what information can be discussed. If we are writing to someone outside the Service on your behalf, we will normally offer you the chance to approve the wording before it is sent. Sometimes, we will ask you to complete a disclosure authorisation form if we are dealing with an external agency on your behalf.
All the computers, the systems we use, any lists and individual files containing personal information, are all password protected. Electronic case notes are encrypted. Casefiles created before September 2020 are in paper format and are kept securely locked within the Service. All electronic and paper case files can only be accessed by staff employed within the Advice and Counselling Service.
Counsellors comply with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy Code of Ethics and Practice. Copies of this are available from the Service. Psychiatrists are governed by the NHS and Psychologists are governed by the British Psychological Society.
Welfare Advisers comply with government regulations on immigration advice, and a range of professional requirements and competency frameworks for other areas of advice work.
Welfare Advisers at Queen Mary are regulated under OISC guidelines to give immigration advice. The OISC (Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner) is an independent organisation that monitors immigration advice and services. Advisers have to attend regular training to be able to do this.
If you feel unhappy about the way in which the Service has managed issues regarding confidentiality and data protection you can register these using the Advice and Counselling Service Complaints Procedure. Alternatively, if you wish to complain about immigration advice, you can complain directly to the OISC. Their complaints form is on the website.
This policy is reviewed annually by the Head of the Advice and Counselling Service.
Updated: March 2022
Review Date: March 2023
Staff member responsible for review: Niall Morrissey
1. The Advice and Counselling Service consists of specialist staff (counsellors, welfare advisers, mental health advisers, wellbeing advisers and psychiatrists); administrative staff (frontline and other administrative staff) and external consultants. For the purposes of our Confidentiality Policy, the Service also includes Queen Mary’s Disability Advisers based in the Queen Mary Disability and Dyslexia Service. Administrative staff have access to information about you to allow them to perform their administrative duties. Specialist staff, who you will see for appointments, will share information about you between them to ensure that your needs are fully understood and met. Specialist staff engage in professional supervision to discuss their client work. This may be with external consultants. This is done anonymously whenever possible. From time-to-time specialist staff will attend courses or meetings where they may present case material, which is anonymous, as part of their professional development.
2. This includes friends, family, academic and other Queen Mary staff outside our Service.
3. We are not obliged to break confidentiality if we learn that a crime has been committed or is planned – and will not normally do so unless you or someone else is in serious danger – see below. However we can be compelled to give evidence in court or produce case notes in certain situations, although this is rare and we will decline involvement where possible.
4. The most usual cause for disclosure is when a student is at risk of suicide or appears to have lost the ability to act rationally in taking care of themselves or others. Less common reasons might be if we learn about the possibility of planned individual violence; intended acts of terrorism; safeguarding issues or any other clear possibility of serious harm to anyone.