Join Psychology

Terms and Conditions

Introduction
Our Terms and Conditions summarise the finer details of our work with you. We understand you may have lots of questions about your work with Join Psychology and we hope to help you understand our ways of working so you can decide whether you would like to work with us. Please take the time to read this information carefully as it is important you understand and agree to the Terms and Conditions before we start our work together as we ask that you read, sign and return a copy of these Terms and Conditions before we begin our work together.

Confidentiality
Please also see our Privacy Policy for information on how we collect, store, process and share your personal data related to the services we provide to you.

Your contact with Join Psychology, including information gathered prior to assessment, discussed in assessment and therapy sessions and all written material, is confidential.  This means that we will not disclose any information about you to any third party, unless you agree and consent to this.  The information we collect and hold about you is confidential to the Join Psychology team which means that our administrative and clinical support staff who support our work behind the scenes may also have access to your information to help us the clinicians who work directly with you. There are two sets of circumstances where information may be shared without your explicit consent:

• Clinical Supervision: As recommended by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), we have an ethical duty under our professional Code of Conduct to have regular supervision from another appropriately qualified psychologist.  This process ensures we continue to offer clients the best possible support and services.  As psychologists, we meet regularly with a clinical supervisor to discuss elements of our work; the clinical supervisor will also abide by the same professional and ethical codes of conduct.  During this process, we will share relevant information pertaining to your situation to help us make sense of, review and develop new ideas for helping you but will not share identifiable information, such as your full name.
• Risk: We have both an ethical and a legal obligation to take steps to protect our clients, children and other members of the public from risk of harm.  This means that in the event that a client discloses information to us that indicates either they, or another person, are at risk of serious harm to themselves, other people or at risk from other people, we must inform relevant third parties (for example, next of kin, GP, social services, the police etc.) so that they can act to reduce that risk.   Where possible, we will always try to contact you before sharing any information to manage risk to make you aware of the need, and the reasons, to break confidentiality. In exceptional circumstances, it may not be possible to inform and discuss this with you before we make contact with others to manage risk, but we will always ensure we discuss with you the reasons for and impact of this, including any future risk assessment and management strategies needed in future.

In order to protect your confidentiality and that of other clients accessing the service, we kindly ask clients not to arrive more than 5 minutes before their scheduled appointment time in order to protect the confidentiality and privacy of all clients.

Payment
All payments for psychological therapy and psychological assessment are taken in advance. For psychological therapy, advance payment can be made prior to or on the day of the session at the appropriate regular interval (for example, weekly if being seen weekly, fortnightly if being seen fortnightly). We only accept payment by bank transfer and do not accept card payments, cash or cheques.

If you are accessing psychological therapy or psychological assessment under your private health insurance policy, we will invoice your insurance provider directly.  Please note that we may need to invoice you personally for any services not covered by your policy, for example extra written reports, any policy excesses, non-attended sessions etc. We will always inform our clients if we think there are aspects of the work that may not be funded by your private health insurer. For details of what is covered by insurance please contact your individual provider as policies vary. We will need the details of your private health provider, including Provider, Policy Number and Authorisation code before we can begin our work together.

Cancellations
We understand that sometimes our clients may need to change or cancel appointments and we are happy to reschedule appointments when needed. For therapy and post-diagnostic sessions, we kindly ask our clients to give us at least 24 hours’ notice if you need to cancel a session.  This is so that we have sufficient time to offer the slot to another client or person in need our of services.  Sessions cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice, or those for which a client does not attend, will be charged at the full, agreed rate. For assessments, we kindly ask our clients to give us 48 hours' notice of cancellation. Assessment sessions cancelled with less than 48 hours' notice, or those which a client does not attend will be charged a portion of the full assessment fee which reflects the cancelled time.

Out of Session Contact
We are contactable by telephone and email during standard working hours (9:00-17:00 Monday-Friday).  If we are unable to answer or respond to your enquiry immediately, please leave a message, and we always aim to respond to your contact within 24 hours. If leaving telephone messages, we find it helpful if you could please let us know a bit about the nature of your call (for example, scheduling or change of appointment, enquiry about services). The Join Psychology practice telephone is diverted to voicemail from 17:00 hours each day during the week, and from 17:00 on Friday evenings until 09:00 on Monday mornings.  Messages left during these diverted periods may not be received until 09:00 the following day (or on Monday if left over the weekend).  There may be times when the Join Psychology practice is closed due to annual leave and we will always inform our clients of this in advance and set email and telephone response messages to inform our clients that the practice is closed and when we will reopen. We are unable to provide an urgent care or out-of-hours service but do understand that at times, our clients may need access to more urgent support. We will provide you with information about local urgent care services when we begin our work with you. We kindly ask that clients do not leave urgent messages on the Join Psychology practice voicemail but if you need to speak with someone urgently, depending on the particular issue, you could contact:

• Your GP or out-of-hours GP service.
• NHS non-emergency services on 111.
• Non-emergency services help on 101.
• In case of emergency, call 999.

Accessibility
If you have any difficulties reading and/or understanding the Terms and Conditions, please contact us and we will try to help you understand the information.