Midlothian Young People's Advice Service | Hide this site

Promoting the health and wellbeing of young people in East Lothian and Midlothian
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Your Right to Confidentiality Explained

Opening up to professionals about your health and wellbeing can be the first step to getting support. MYPAS understands that this can feel really scary. Sometimes you might be worried about MYPAS staff sharing the information you tell them with other professionals. Or you might be worried that they will share it with other people, like your family and friends.

If you are over 12 years old, we will not share any of the information you tell us in your sessions and we will not share any of your personal details without your permission.

Unless…

Something you have said makes your MYPAS worker believe you or someone else may be in danger or at risk of serious harm. Keeping you safe and the safety of others in mind, the worker will act in your best interest. The worker will always try to talk with you first if they think that they may have to break confidentiality.

Consent

Consent means giving someone a choice about actions and respecting their answer. We often use the language “asking for permission.”

MYPAS staff can share your information with your consent if:

  • You ask them to. For example, if you ask your counsellor or youth worker to share what you’ve told them with your parents or carers.
  • You agree to this. For example, if you agree to your information being shared with another service, like a local charity or a medical professional, so you can be referred there.

Your worker will explain what this is and ask for you to sign a consent form during your first session with them.

Our policy on sharing your information

All of MYPAS’ services are free and confidential, so the personal information you provide directly to us will ONLY be kept between us and you. We have policies on gathering consent and sharing information appropriately and you can ask us to see these. We may share anonymised information in order to improve our services or report our activity.

MYPAS committed to keeping people safe, and this means that we may share your personal information with other appropriate organisations if we believe there’s a good reason to. We will let you know if we feel this is necessary, unless telling you would cause harm.

Our policy on storing your information

MYPAS will keep your personal data in order to provide you with our Services. Your personal information will be retained in accordance with Scottish law and regulation, and we will never retain your information for longer than permitted under law and regulation.

Children and Young People

  • Children and Young People counselling records are retained for a period of 3 years after the conclusion of any counselling sessions. For all other services we retain records for 7 years.
  • Complaints information is retained for a period of 10 years.

Online

  • Details of online enquiries regarding any of our Services are retained for 1 year
  • Anonymised details of your use of our website and online Services are retained for 24 months.

If asked to do so by you, we will delete your personal data if it is no longer necessary for the provision of our Services to keep them.

Complaints

If you want to make a complaint to or about MYPAS, you can contact us directly to discuss this at enquiries@mypas.co.uk.

For fuller advice on how to complain about a service you receive, please see our MYPAS Standards of Service webpage 

For more details on how we collect and protect your information, see our Privacy Policy