Terms and Conditions of Service:

Confidentiality

You will be asked to confirm your agreement to our confidentiality policy in the next section of this online referral form. If you have any concerns about this policy please contact the counselling secretary on 01 4023352/0860820543 before you complete your online referral form.

Contact

Contact will only be made with students using the phone number provided by them and/or their assigned DIT Email only.

Eligibility

All users of the service must be fully registered in the current academic year.

Student who have deferred their course or are repeating without full registration may not be eligible to attend the counselling service during that academic year.

Once students have completed their studies at TU Dublin, appointments may not continue past the 30th June of the academic year in which they complete.

Any student under 18yrs of age will require parental consent to attend the Student Counselling and Development Service.

Use of Data

Student’s information and profile may be used, with their permission, for research purposes. Evaluation Forms may be sent to students with their permission. Student’s information and profile will be used for statistical purposes.

Booking an Appointment

When you complete the online intake forms, you will be invited to choose an assessment appointment in a place and time that best suit you (based on the available choices), through the YouCanBook.Me System.

If you have requested an appointment by email/text/ telephone, you should receive a link to the terms and conditions of the service and the Intake Form. You should also receive a link to book your own assessment appointment at a place and time that best suit you (based on the available choices), through the YouCanBook.Me System.

Appointments can only be offered once the terms and conditions of the service and an intake form have been completed.

You will be sent a reminder of your first appointment only.

Service Cancellation Policy

If you have to cancel/ reschedule your assessment appointment you can do this through the Bookme System, once it is more than 48hrs before your assessment. If it is outside of this time you can contact Noelle at 01 4023352/0860820543 to reschedule your appointment.

If you cancel your appointment with less than 48hrs notice the session will be counted as one of your allocated sessions.

If you fail to arrive for an assessment appointment and do not contact the service within 48hrs we will assume that you do not wish to make any further appointments with the service and your file will be closed.

If you cancel more than 2 appointments with less than 48hrs notice this may result in the service closing your file. You may contact the service again if you wish to make more appointments at a later date.

Waiting List

At peak periods during the academic year students may be placed on a waiting list for ongoing appointments, once they have been assessed. You will be contacted with an offer of ongoing counselling as soon as an appointment becomes available.

If the offered time does not suit you, a further two alternative appointments may be offered. The appointment time will be held for you for a period of 24 hrs after which it will be offered to another student.

Appointments are allocated once a space becomes available. If you cannot make any of the appointments offered, you may be placed back on hold until you are available.

The full Counselling Service Policy can be found at www.dit.ie/counselling

Confidentiality

The Student Counselling and Development Service respects the privacy, integrity and welfare of those with whom they work. All counsellors in the service operate within their professional code of ethics and strive to maintain confidentiality. However, limits to this confidentiality exist in that counsellors are obliged to breach confidentiality in the following circumstances:

• There is significant and imminent risk of suicide and/or physical injury/harm to client or others.
• 
  There are reasonable concerns that a child or vulnerable adult is at risk of or has experienced abuse or neglect. In these cases, the counsellor has a responsibility to refer that concern on to the appropriate authority.
  The counsellor’s records are subpoenaed by law.

Client information is stored on the counselling client management database, the intake form, the BookMe system and Google calendar. None of these systems are connected to the other student management systems of DIT. Client written records are kept in a locked filing cabinet in the counselling office. All client data is destroyed after a period of seven years. Client information may be shared among the counselling team as part of case management or in supervisory contexts. At all times this information remains confidential within the team or the supervisory environment.