Involving Young People in Parenting Programmes
SECTION 4
Session 4: Confidentiality
Clearly, confidentiality is an important issue when working with either parents or young people. For the IYPP project, however, it was even more important because of the complexities of working with both parents and young people at the same time. This issue arises whether there are different or the same workers with the parent(s) and young person. The breach of confidentiality became a fear for some parents at one site, as staff were working with both the parents and the young people in parallel. Parents were concerned that their young people could share personal information with other young people on their group, which would then reach other parents. Young people also seemed to be less open to sharing personal information if they thought that site staff were working with their parents too. Sometimes parents wanted to know what their young people were saying, if the work was done in parallel. At times site staff struggled with ethics of confidentiality, as they were party to information that they felt may have been useful to share, in order to promote better understanding between parents and young people.
This issue was the focus of a workshop at an IYPP project meeting, where site staff discussed and shared ideas.
General issues – Service providers should have protocolsand procedures regardingconfidentialityand should make sure that all staff, including new staff, are aware of them. Protocols need to be very clear regarding child protection procedures, which should be identified as a non-negotiable area when establishing agreement about confidentiality at the beginning of work with families. It is a good idea to have a generic project confidentiality statement and to share it with all family members taking part in the intervention. This can lead on to a discussion about how each family and individual family members want to operate. Information sharing protocols should be in place and family members made aware of them. If the confidentiality issues are addressed at the beginning of interventions, it makes it easier for workers to address whether and how information can be shared later in the intervention, if they feel it will be useful to promote a better understanding between the parent/s and young person.
Working with parents and young people together – It is important to address confidentiality when you begin to work with family members together and when working with a number of families. In the first joint session ground rules need to be agreed by all parties. It is useful to have some practical examples to illustrate points that need to be to made, ensuring a clear understanding by all.
Working with parents and young people in parallel – Some of the issues here have been addressed above. However, the lessons learned from the IYPP project have shown that workers do need to be very clear about confidentiality when working in parallel and separate sessions with parents and young people as their concerns about confidentiality can be greater than if they were the only family member working with the project. Experience from the IYPP project suggests that workers should address confidentiality separately with each family member as well as together. For example, by addressing confidentiality clearly in a session with parents before the work with the young person started, it seemed to deal with the issue of parents expecting to be able to hear from workers what young people had been saying in their sessions.