I Work With Children With Special Needs
I manage a counselling agency for young people and barely a day goes by these days that I don’t have to bear witness to some personal atrocity experienced by a young person. The counsellors have to come and talk to me if a young person tells them something that requires me to break confidentiality – i.e. if they pose a risk to themselves or others. Assessing the lethality of their suicide plans, their immediacy; whether a push or a slap is abuse; if it’ll be safe to send them home. The protocol for bad situations is a social worker and the police.
I have to say to my counsellors – ‘Tell them what the line is, let them talk up to that point, but be clear that if they say ‘this’ then we have to do something’ – and then they go back into the room to mark this arbitrary line, and the young person has to choose. To tell us, and ruin everything, no matter how bad everything is?
The other week I had a complaint levelled against my decision making by a father. Two weeks before Christmas we’d had a 15 year old girl disclose that she’d taken 8 paracetemol at school that day as a suicide attempt because she’d broken up with her girlfriend. Both the counsellor and I discussed with her that we felt we needed to contact the specialist services. At assessment this girl was deemed fit and competent to make her own treatment decisions so, at her request, we wouldn’t speak directly to the parents. So, did the right thing, contacted the mental health team and the social workers, reported my concern. Spoke to the mother, who picked up the girl, and told her not much except she needed to make an urgent appointment with her GP to make a referral into the formal mental health services (for medication).
The following week I get a phone call from the Dad, threatening me because I hadn’t told him that his daughter was suicidal and hearing voices that were telling her to kill herself. He’d got a letter from the adolescent mental health team detailing all his daughter’s woes and offering them appointments with a psychiatric nurse for a self-harming group.
As a father I felt for him. I tried to explain. A mixture of protocol and good sense – ‘The young people wouldn’t tell us anything if they thought we were going to tell it all to their parents’ etc. We looked after his daughter all the ways we were allowed to. I was unable to tell him that his daughter was terrified of him because he was an angry threatening bully who paid no attention to her needs or cares. But of course he knew that, but was racked with guilt that his girl couldn’t talk to him about her deepest fears, I’m sure. I feel the same. But, in case she’s as screwed up as she is due to something he’s done in the past it would be entirely inappropriate for me to break her confidentiality agreement with us.
I have to say to my counsellors – ‘Tell them what the line is, let them talk up to that point, but be clear that if they say ‘this’ then we have to do something’ – and then they go back into the room to mark this arbitrary line, and the young person has to choose. To tell us, and ruin everything, no matter how bad everything is?
The other week I had a complaint levelled against my decision making by a father. Two weeks before Christmas we’d had a 15 year old girl disclose that she’d taken 8 paracetemol at school that day as a suicide attempt because she’d broken up with her girlfriend. Both the counsellor and I discussed with her that we felt we needed to contact the specialist services. At assessment this girl was deemed fit and competent to make her own treatment decisions so, at her request, we wouldn’t speak directly to the parents. So, did the right thing, contacted the mental health team and the social workers, reported my concern. Spoke to the mother, who picked up the girl, and told her not much except she needed to make an urgent appointment with her GP to make a referral into the formal mental health services (for medication).
The following week I get a phone call from the Dad, threatening me because I hadn’t told him that his daughter was suicidal and hearing voices that were telling her to kill herself. He’d got a letter from the adolescent mental health team detailing all his daughter’s woes and offering them appointments with a psychiatric nurse for a self-harming group.
As a father I felt for him. I tried to explain. A mixture of protocol and good sense – ‘The young people wouldn’t tell us anything if they thought we were going to tell it all to their parents’ etc. We looked after his daughter all the ways we were allowed to. I was unable to tell him that his daughter was terrified of him because he was an angry threatening bully who paid no attention to her needs or cares. But of course he knew that, but was racked with guilt that his girl couldn’t talk to him about her deepest fears, I’m sure. I feel the same. But, in case she’s as screwed up as she is due to something he’s done in the past it would be entirely inappropriate for me to break her confidentiality agreement with us.
By:
CrookedMan
Age:
46-50
