Client & Practitioner Contract

The Purpose of This Contract

This contract aims to provide information supporting your experience and enhancing the benefits of your participation in therapy sessions. The terms and conditions outlined below are essential for safeguarding your rights as a client. Feel free to ask any questions during the first session for clarification.

Counselling Services: What happens in counselling?

Sessions involve communication with a Counsellor. Confidentiality is maintained, with exceptions mandated by law. Couples therapy involves joint confidentiality, with no secrets kept between partners.

Your Privacy

As practitioners at A Psy of Relief, we uphold confidentiality as a cornerstone of our work, adhering to a code of ethics. Information and details shared during sessions, along with your identity, remain confidential. Exceptions to this include:

Supervision: Sometimes we would need to discuss and carefully disclose some information in supervision with our private supervisors or other mental health professional. We only do this to improve our skills to support you in sessions in the best way possible. However, your identity is still protected and any identifiable information is adapted in a way as not to be discovered.

Referral to Healthcare Professionals: In case you may require more support from another healthcare professional such as a psychiatrist, we would need to communicate important information with them to provide you with the right treatment.

Risk of Harm: If we see that you pose a serious risk of self-harm, harm to others, including minors; or you are in serious imminent harm- we would need to seek the authority’s services for the purpose of protecting you and society at large. This includes serious threats of suicide and abuse of all natures. In consideration of the level of risk, our first and preferred approach is to discuss with you or an alternative preferred safety method such as contacting a family member. For this, we kindly ask you to provide us with an emergency contact name and number in the meeting.

Respect, Safety and Time

During the sessions, we need to keep you in a safe environment. In the same context, we must keep ourselves safe too. If we feel at risk of being harmed through verbal and/or physical means, we may decide to terminate our contract.

If we feel that the sessions taking place are exiting the scope of our work and your therapeutic goals, we may decide to terminate our contract.

We understand that the need arises where you may need to postpone or cancel your session, to which we kindly ask you to inform us immediately. However, your commitment is essential to the therapeutic process, thus we may decide to terminate our contract in case of repeated cancellations.

In case you wish to contact us, you may do so at any time during the day, however we kindly ask you to respect our boundaries and allow us time to respond within our designated working hours.

The practitioner must never be contacted in cases of emergency. A list of emergency contact services can be given to you upon request. The local emergency contact number is 112.

Recording of Sessions

Clients are prohibited from recording therapy sessions without prior explicit permission.

Payment of Fees

Clients must pay therapy session and clinic fees immediately, following the rates specified by the therapist.

Fees and Cancellation Policy

Hourly rates are €45 for adults and couples and €35 for students. Fees are collected by the therapist, and cancellations with less than 24 hours’ notice are charged at half the full rate.

Session Cancellation Policy

Clients must provide 24 hours’ notice to cancel a therapy session; failure to do so may result in a cancellation fee of €23.

General GDPR

If you wish to not be regarded in public, in case we coincidentally come across each other, kindly inform us in writing.

For the purpose of record keeping, we take notes electronically or on paper which are stored in a safe place, inaccessible to third parties and compliant with GDPR. Client files are securely stored and destroyed five years after therapy termination.

By signing below, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the terms and conditions outlined in this contract and agree to abide by them.