Before we offer any therapy, we need to be confident that the benefit is likely to outweigh any possible harm that might occur as a result.
In most cases, we aim to obtain explicit consent from all parents and carers before offering therapy to children and young people. We know that this can be difficult for some families and we are always happy to talk things through with you to work out the best approach.
There are a few reasons why this is important:
To make sure the child is supported as well as possible
Therapy can be hard work. Children often get in touch with feelings or memories that they have been keeping hidden, and try out new ways of managing situations. Their behaviour might get worse before it gets better, and it is important for everyone looking after them to be ready to understand and support them through this process. This includes step parents and grandparents with a caring role, although we don’t usually need to seek consent directly from wider family members.
Sometimes a therapist might suggest different parenting approaches based on what they learn about a child through therapy, and it is helpful if all carers can agree on if and how to put these into practice.
To avoid causing the child unnecessary distress
For some children, seeing a therapist every week can become an important part of their lives and they want to talk about this with the adults who are important to them. Having to hide these appointments, or sensing that one of their important people is not happy about them, can cause upset or anxiety that prevents them from using therapy effectively and outweighs any benefit they are getting from therapy sessions.
To provide an additional safeguard to the confidentiality of therapy records
For therapy to be effective, we offer children and young people confidentiality. It is essential that all parents and carers understand from the beginning that children’s therapy appointments are confidential and agree that they will not have access to their children’s records, so that children and young people’s trust in the therapist and the therapy is not broken.
To prevent disruption to our overall therapy service
If a parent raised a formal complaint about therapy being offered to their child without their consent, it is possible that this could result in a therapist being unable to practice while this was investigated. This would have a very serious impact on all the children and families being supported by that therapist.
If it is not possible to seek consent
All conversations with the Apple Tree Centre are confidential (within the usual terms of our Confidentiality and Record Keeping agreement), and we will never tell another parent that you have contacted the Apple Tree Centre without your explicit consent. There are few situations where it would not be possible or appropriate for us to approach all parents and carers for their consent, and we will discuss this with you in detail if this is likely to be the case for your family. There are a few possible outcomes in that case:
If your child is over 13 and is actively asking for therapy for themselves, we can assess whether they are able to consent to their own therapy. The therapist would need to assess this in relation to a legal standard referred to as ‘Gillick competency’, which includes making sure they fully understand the therapy that is being offered and the potential implications of doing this without the knowledge and support of all their parents / carers, and that they are actively requesting therapy on their own behalf.
If we do not have consent from all parents OR Gillick competent consent from a young person, we will not offer direct therapy to a child. Instead, we can offer therapeutic parenting support. For many children and young people this approach can be at least as effective as one-to-one therapy, if not more so, and we do not need anybody else’s consent to work with you as an adult.
If there is no contact at all between your child and their other parent, please contact us to discuss this. There are a very few exceptional situations where we might be able to offer one-to-one therapy under these circumstances but we will need to discuss the situation in detail to ensure that the risks described above are unlikely to apply.