British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors  Friending and Connecting Arches Counselling or individual therapists do not accept friend or contact requests from current or former clients on any social networking site. Confidentiality and privacy may be compromised and maintains to protect professional boundaries of the therapeutic relationship.   

Updates on the website, blog Facebook and or Instagram account are published there is no expectation that you as a client will follow. It is at your discretion to follow, comment, and or like a post. Arches Counselling will not follow any individual. If you have any concerns or you are a business and we follow you, please let us know in session. If aspects of your online activities are relevant then please bring them into our sessions.

SMS (mobile phone text messaging) can be used for scheduling but do not share anything that if there were a breach of security, the cell phone was lost that this information could be made public. I always store your contact with initials; however, it would be easy enough to trace a phone number back to a name.  Messages on Social Networking sites are not secure and may not be responded to. Arches encourage all clients to use the secure messaging platform that OWLpractice provides.  Please be aware that any content in email or text that is considered relevant to your well-being as a client will be copied and added to your notes.   Emailing Please be aware that any content related to your therapy sessions is retained in the logs of both your and our internet service providers. Any information exchanged is vulnerable to a confidentiality breach and becomes part of your legal record.  If you have questions or concerns about any of these policies and procedures or regarding our potential interactions on the Internet, do bring them to my attention so that we can discuss them.   Electronic Devices If any of your devices use location-based services or have a passive LBS app enabled on your phone it may be possible to track visits to the office.

Arches Counselling is listed on several sites Yelp, Google, Yahoo, and other business listings. As a client, a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement may also compromise your privacy and confidentiality.  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). In the 2014 revision of the ethics code. The summary is that counsellors can use unsolicited testimonials as long as they have discussed the implications with the client and received his or her permission  If you are ever unsatisfied we encourage you to bring it up to your therapist directly, another staff member at Arches Counselling. We do have external professionals who are willing to mediate any issue that cannot be resolved.

This social media policy is adapted from Keely Kolmes, Psy.D and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, making it available to other mental wellness professionals.