Kristen Berube, MA, RCC
Registered
Clinical Counsellor
(250)
619-0901
Memorandum of Understanding
About
Me:
I
received my Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology through the Adler School
of Professional Psychology in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a concentration
in Mindfulness-Based approaches to overall health and well-being. I utilize a
number of brief therapies including mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT),
cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), Dialectic Behaviour
Therapy (DBT) and Motivational Interviewing in order to create individualized
planning to meet your unique needs.
My
approach to clients is always strength-based, as I believe that every
individual has unique strengths and resiliencies that can serve as a foundation
for their personal growth. One of my key professional interests the cultivation
of resilience (the ability to bounce back from adversity), and self-efficacy
(one's own belief in their capacity to change and achieve goals). I believe that
both of these internal resources can be cultivated in any individual through
personal exploration and self-reflection. I assist clients in tapping into
existing strengths.
What is
clinical counselling?
Clinical
counselling helps people improve their mental, emotional and physical health
while encouraging positive relationships with self, others and the larger
community. The building of a trusting and comfortable relationship between
client(s) and counsellor is important as counselling may cover topics of
distress, therefore questions or comments on the counselling process are
invited at any time.
Benefits
of therapy:
Therapy
can help a person to gain a new understanding about his or her problems and to
acquire new ways of coping with and solving those problems. Therapy can help a
person to develop new skills and to change behaviour patterns. Therapy can
contribute to an increased understanding of self and others.
Risks of
therapy:
While
there are potential benefits to therapy, success is not guaranteed and there
are potential risks. Therapy may stimulate memories, evoke strong feelings, and
changes in awareness may alter oneÕs self-perceptions and ways of relating to
others. Sometimes clients will
feel worse before they feel better.
This is especially a concern for trauma clients. A person needs to understand that
therapy is a process and you can continually discuss any concerns you are
having with your therapist.
Contact
and Communication:
You can contact Kristen by phone at (250) 619-0901 or
via email at restorativecounselling@outlook.com
Most communications will be responded to within 24-48 hours.
Collection
and Storage of Personal information:
Storage
and collection of client information is in accordance with the personal
information protection act (PIPA) and in accordance with the BCACC and CCC
guidelines. If you have any
questions regarding this, please talk to Kristen directly.
Complaints
or questions:
If
you have a complaint or question, please feel welcome to talk to Kristen
first. If you would like to talk
to someone else, you can contact the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors at
(250) 595-4448 or you can contact the Canadian Counselling Association at
1-(877)-765-5565.
Fees:
The
fee for counselling at the Wentworth Street office location is $105 for
individuals and $120 for couples (includes tax). Individual sessions are 50 minutes in length, and couples
sessions are 1.5 hours for the first session, and 60 minutes for each
subsequent session. ÒWalk TherapyÓ
sessions can be arranged after the initial session, with options of meeting at
a beach, or walking a trail. Outdoor sessions are $105 for 50 minute sessions
and $120 for 90 minute sessions. A sliding fee may be available for students
and individuals with financial hardship. Longer sessions are also available,
charged at the above rate, when they are required. Telephone consultations and
distance counselling are charged by the ¼ hour.
Payment is accepted by cash or can also be made through PayPal (using credit
card or debit card) on www.restorativecounselling.com
and this payment is requested in advance of sessions. In the case of payment not being made before the appointment
or at the appointment time, clients will be charged a $10 fee per unpaid
session for each full or partial month that they have not paid. Clients have 30
days before this fee will begin to accumulate.
Cancelled and/or missed appointments:
24 hours notice must be given for the cancellation of appointments otherwise, the full session fee will be charged. As there is a high demand for services, your time is reserved exclusively for you and therefore is not available to others.
Extended health benefits and income tax:
Clinical counsellor fees are not covered by MSP
but may be completely or partially covered by your extended medical plan or
possibly deductible as a medical expense on income taxes. Some insurance
companies will cover expenses of a counsellor if they are supervised by a
Registered Social Worker or Psychologist.
Child and Youth Therapy Guidelines:
á Kristen typically uses the age of
12 years old to determine whether a youth can provide consent.
á It is recommended that a parent
stays in the waiting room while their child is in session, especially for the
first session. Outdoor sessions
may be suggested for later sessions, if your child would benefit from engaging
in an activity outdoors while talking. This is often less intimidating for children.
á
Regularity
and consistency of attendance is extremely important so the therapist and your
child can develop a trusting therapeutic relationship.
á
Do
not question your child about their counselling session. Your child will share what they feel
comfortable with.
á
Do
not press a child to attend counselling or to talk about a particular issue in
counselling. The child will
address issues as they feel safe and ready to do so, or they may be addressing
them in other ways, i.e. through play or art. Pressure from a parent/caregiver
may place undue stress on a child and may in fact be detrimental to the
counselling process.
á Do support your child as they
courageously face their issues in counselling.
á Do be open to participating in
counselling yourself.
These are general guidelines only. Your
counsellor and you can discuss these in depth and develop a plan about how you
can best be of support to your child in counselling.
Limits
of Confidentiality:
Information
about counselling sessions will not be released to anyone without your
informed, voluntary, and written consent.
Exceptions
are:
á
When you may be a danger to yourself or others
á
When there is suspicion or disclosure of abuse of
vulnerable persons, such as a child or elderly person
á
When records are subpoenaed by court order
Every
reasonable effort will be made to discuss these circumstances with you prior to
the involvement of other professionals.
An
additional exception may be made if the counselling is being paid for by a
third party (such as an EAP). This will be discussed with you at the onset of
counselling.
Consent to Release Information
In
the event of an emergency, or should your counsellor determine you are at risk,
please provide the name of an emergency contact person that can be contact and
collaborated with to ensure your safety. All information shared with this
person will be discussed with you in advance, or with you present. Initial here
to consent ________
Emergency
Contact Name________________________________ Phone_______________________________
Contacting
other Health professionals:
It may be helpful or necessary for Kristen to
speak to other professionals who may be involved in aspects of your physical
and emotional health. Wherever
possible, this will be done with your understanding the intent of such
contact. You have the right to
know what transpired in any conversations between your counsellor and other
professionals.
*Please
confirm by initialling here that you give your permission for me to give
updates, receive information and/or discuss your case with these professionals
________
Other professionals involved in my health care
are (ex. DrÕs, SWÕs, other therapistÕs):
Name: |
Contact: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Were you referred by your Dr. or an agency? YES/ NO
Initial, _____if you give permission for us to
acknowledge this referral with the referring Dr. or agency, etc. YES/NO
Couples
and family Counselling:
For these types of counselling, please understand
that KristenÕs policy is to Òhave no secretsÓ between her and the parties in
the therapy. If you have concerns
about this, please speak to Kristen directly.
Consultation:
In
order to provide the best possible service, I may
consult with another professional(s) about our work together; your name and
other identifying information would not be used. ______
Kristen does presentations about her work and
about teaching principles of caring for ourselves and others. If you would like Kristen to be able to
use your story (Kristen will change identifying characteristics such as your
name, age, sex and some details about your story), please initial here
indicating that you agree and give consent______
Kristen regularly presents and facilitates
stress-reduction groups and art workshops. If you would like to be included on her contact list, please
initial here______. You can join a waitlist for these services by accessing the
group page at www.restorativecounselling.com
Additional
client rights:
á
Clients have the right to
withdraw this consent at any time.
Please provide this in writing wherever possible.
á
Clients have the right to
refuse particular counselling interventions.
Clients
with Addictions concerns:
Clients must not be affected by substances at the
time of the counselling appointment. This typically requires that a client is
sober for the 24 hours before the time of the appointment.
My Private Practice Social Media Policy
This Social Media Policy was copied and slightly modified
for my own use from the Social Media Policy from the website for Holloway
Counselling which credited the information to Keely Kolmes, Psy.D., who licensed
it under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License,
making it available to other
mental health professionals.
The BCACC requires Registered Clinical
Counsellors (RCC) who use Social Media to have a Social Media Policy. This
document outlines my office policies related to use of Social Media. Please
read it to understand how I conduct myself on the Internet as a mental health
professional and how you can expect me to respond to various interactions that
may occur between us on the Internet.
If you have any questions about anything within
this document, I encourage you to bring them up when we meet. As new technology
develops and the Internet changes, there may be times when I need to update
this policy. If I do so, I will notify you in writing of any policy changes and
make sure you have a copy of the updated policy. I will also change information
on my website accordingly.
Friending
I do not accept friend or contact requests from
current or former clients on any social networking site (Facebook, LinkedIn,
etc). I believe that adding clients as friends or contacts on these sites can
compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur
the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. I also do not interact with clients
on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. If you need
to contact me between sessions, the best way to do so is by phone, or by email.
If you have questions about this, please bring them up when we meet and we can
talk more about it.
Following
I occasionally post articles related to wellness
and psychology on my website, on the Restorative Counselling Facebook page and
I post psychology news on Twitter. I have no expectation that you as a client
will want to follow my blog or Twitter stream. Comments have been not been disabled
on my website, because it is an open space for members of the public to post. Please
be aware of your own confidentiality and whether you may be recognized as a
client if you have an easily recognizable username. If I happen to notice that
youÕve followed me on LinkedIn, Twitter or have ÒlikedÓ the Restortive
Counselling Facebook page and I am concerned about your confidentiality, we may
briefly discuss it and its potential impact on our working relationship. My
primary concern is your privacy. You are welcome to use your own discretion in
choosing whether to follow me.
I only follow other health professionals on
Twitter and I do not follow current or former clients on blogs or Twitter. My
reasoning is that I believe casual viewing of clientsÕ online content outside
of the therapy hour can create confusion in regard to whether itÕs being done
as a part of your treatment or to satisfy my personal curiosity. In addition,
viewing your online activities without your consent and without our explicit
arrangement towards a specific purpose could potentially have a negative
influence on our working relationship. If there are things from your online
life that you wish to share with me, please bring them into our sessions where
we can view and explore them together, during the therapy hour.
Use of
Search Engines
It is not a regular part of my practice to search
for clients on Google or Facebook or other search engines. Extremely rare
exceptions may be made during times of crisis. If I have a reason to suspect
that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with me via our usual
means (coming to appointments, or phone contact) there might be an instance in
which using a search engine (to find you, find someone close to you, or to
check on your recent status updates) becomes necessary as part of ensuring your
welfare. These are unusual situations and if I ever resort to such means, I
will fully document it and discuss it with you when we next meet.
Business
Review Sites
You may find my psychology practice on sites such
as Yelp, Google, Yahoo Local, Bing, or other places which list businesses. Some
of these sites include forums in which users rate their providers and add
reviews. Many of these sites comb search engines for business listings and
automatically add listings regardless of whether the business has added itself
to the site. If you should find my listing on any of these sites, please know
that my listing is NOT a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement from
you as my client.
The British Columbia Association of Clinical
Counsellors (BCACC) Standard for Promoting and Advertising Services states, Òan
RCC should never solicit testimonials, expressly or by implication, from
clients or other persons who, because of their particular circumstances, may be
vulnerable to undue influenceÓ (BCACC Code of Ethical Conduct and Standards of
Clinical Practice and Guidelines for Registered Clinical Counsellors, 2011).
You have a right to express yourself on any site
you wish. But due to confidentiality, I cannot respond to any review on any of
these sites whether it is positive or negative. I urge you to take your own
privacy as seriously as I take my commitment of confidentiality to you. You
should also be aware that if you are using these sites to communicate
indirectly with me about your feelings about our work, there is a good
possibility that I may never see it.
If we are working together, I hope that you will
bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly into the therapy
process. This can be an important part of therapy, even if you decide we are
not a good fit. None of this is meant to keep you from sharing that you are in
therapy with me wherever and with whomever you like.
Confidentiality means that I cannot tell people
that you are my client and my Ethics Code prohibits me from requesting
testimonials. But you are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that IÕm
your therapist or how you feel about the treatment I provided to you, in any
forum of your choosing.
If you do choose to write something on a business
review site, I hope you will keep in mind that you may be sharing personally
revealing information in a public forum. I urge you to create a pseudonym that
is not linked to your regular email address or friend networks for your own
privacy and protection.
Location-Based
Services
If you used location-based services on your
mobile phone, you may wish to be aware of the privacy issues related to using
these services. I do not place my practice as a check-in location on various
sites such as Foursquare, Facebook, etc. However, if you have GPS tracking
enabled on your device, it is possible that others may surmise that you are a
therapy client due to your location.
Thank you for taking the time to review my Social
Media Policy. If you have questions or concerns about any of these policies and
procedures or regarding our potential interactions on the Internet, do bring
them to my attention so that we can discuss them.
Email
and Electronic Communication Policy (ECP)
It has been determined by the BCACC (BC
Association of Clinical Counsellors) that Registered Clinical Counsellors
(RCCs) who use any form of electronic communication in their practices should
develop an Electronic Communication Policy (ECP). Given the widespread use of
electronic communication, it is anticipated that nearly all RCCs need an ECP.
To ensure informed consent, RCCs should share the
ECP with their clients as part of the intake process. An important function of
an ECP is to provide the client with a general reminder of limitations in the
security of information shared via each electronic medium available to the
client.
Email
Email is used as a point of primary contact for a
number of my clients. I may also use email for confirming appointment times and
for forwarding links to articles, meditations, books and other resources to
enhance your therapy. There is always a chance that your privacy can be
compromised when appointment times and resources are sent electronically. Please
read below for more information:
1. No
form of encryption is used by the practice for outgoing emails.
2. Kristen
Berube, MA, RCC is the only employee at Restorative Counselling entitled to
read and respond
to
emails from clients. The specific email address to be used for general
scheduling or inquiries as well as
information
addressed directly to Kristen is restorativecounselling@outlook.com
3. When
you receive a message from the Restorative Counselling, it is clear who has
written the message based on
the
use of my personalized signature line.
4. Emails
will generally be responded to within 48 hours (unless your counsellor is on
vacation), and if a response
has
not been received within that time, you can call 250-619-0901.
5. When
sending emails to your counsellor, please identify the purpose of any email you
send, and its urgency, in
the
subject line (ex: ÒArticle- Non-urgentÓ, or ÒAppointment Cancellation, would
like to Reschedule- UrgentÓ)
6. All
communications from the practice will also include a subject line that makes
clear the purpose and urgency of
the
communication.
7. Email
messages become part of your counselling records and as such may be subject to
being shared along with
your
record should the documents be subpoenaed by the courts, RCMP or other
governing agencies.
8. If
you have any concerns about this mode of communication, you may revoke your
consent at any time. You are also welcome to discuss any questions or concerns
with your counsellor further in your next session.
9.
Emergencies-
Should you find yourself in crisis, email is not an appropriate means of
communication. You may try to contact Kristen directly at 250-619-0901 or the
24-Hour Vancouver Island crisis line at 1.888.494.3888. You can also access walk-in
single session crisis counselling Monday through Friday from 10am to 6:15pm
through Island Health. No appointment is necessary. Services are offered to all
ages free of charge. This service is located at Brooks Landing Mall, #203-2000
Island Highway, Nanaimo, BC.
Please Initial Here Indicating if you agree to
engage in email communication and understand the risks to privacy: ______
Text
Messaging
Some clients request appointment changes or
resources to be sent to them via text message. While this is an easy and
convenient way to send communication, it is also the least secure and it is
requested that you fully consider the risks to your confidentiality surrounding
your access to counselling services if you request this option. Below is a list
of potential risks associated with the use of text messaging such as SMS (Short
Message Service):
1. Communication
issues can arise when communicating in text due to the lack of access to visual
or voice cues, as well as limits on the number of characters that exists in
most text messaging environments, and the common use of ÒshorthandÓ words or
characters to represent meaning.
2. Text
messaging is not particularly secure. Further, a lost or misplaced cell phone,
or a phone simply left in an insecure location, can inadvertently communicate
to others that you are in counselling.
3. Your
First Name and Last Initial will be stored in the cell phone for Restorative
Counselling. Although the phone does have a secure password for access, should
you text or call the phone there is a chance that your first name and last
initial will be displayed.
4. Text
messages are meant to be used for booking appointments, rescheduling
appointments, cancelling appointments and for links to resources to be made
accessible to you for enhancing your therapeutic process. Should they be used
inappropriately (such as to ÒchatÓ or to Òaccess counselling supportÓ), the
messages will not be responded to and this may be discussed for clarification
in the next session.
5. Text
messages will be responded to within 48 hours unless your counsellor is on
vacation. If you are in a crisis, you may try to send a text message requesting
a phone call, but if this is not responded to in a timely manner, please call the
24-Hour Vancouver Island crisis line at 1.888.494.3888. You can also access
walk-in single session crisis counselling Monday through Friday from 10am to
6:15pm through Island Health. No appointment is necessary. Services are offered
to all ages free of charge. This service is located at Brooks Landing Mall,
#203-2000 Island Highway, Nanaimo, BC.
6. All
text messages become part of your counselling records and as such may be
subject to being shared along with your record should the documents be subpoenaed
by the courts, RCMP or other governing agencies.
7. If
you have any concerns about this mode of communication, you may revoke your
consent at any time. You are also welcome to discuss any questions or concerns
with your counsellor further in your next session.
Please provide your cell phone number and initial
here indicating if you are requesting to engage in text message communication
and confirming that you understand the risks to privacy:
Initial
_________
Cell Phone Number for text messages
___________________________________
I have
read, understand, and agree with the above.
__________________________________________________Date:________________
Client (1)
__________________________________________________Date:________________
Client (2)
__________________________________________________Date:________________
Kristen
Berube MA, RCC