Confidentiality means to keep information between you and the person that told you. At Arlington High School we have five counselors on staff who are held to these standards but sometimes have to break that confidentiality.
The break of confidentiality is always for the students best interest and keeping them safe. A few scenarios in which confidentiality is broken are thoughts of self harm, thoughts of plans or hurting someone else, and if you’re in danger going home. In these scenarios counselors will reach out to parents to ensure the students safety, but in extreme cases they will reach out to CPS (Child Protective Services) for mandatory reports.
“In that case, we still do need to break some confidentiality and then we would reach out to CPS, Child Protective Services, though if that’s the case where it’s so bad at home then we need somebody to stand in and make sure that the student gets some help,” said A-C counselor Ms Lisa Sullivan.
Schooling for counselors is a lot of hard work, a bachelors degree, then masters degree and followed with 3,000 hours of post clinical supervision. They get equipped with the tools they need to help each student efficiently.
“Yes, I do [feel comfortable opening up to counselors], because they’re hired professionally, and there’s a lot of students in the school who have things going on, and I think that, like, a lot of people go to the counselors and they should be trusted,” said June Legare (’29).
You don’t only have to go to the counseling center for yourselves. If you have a friend, family member, teammate or anyone else that you are worried about you can tell your counselor to ensure that they get the help they need in the safest way possible.
“If you were coming in to talk about a friend, you might be nervous about it getting out and you losing the friendship, in that case I would say you really have to kind of think deeply and go beyond your feelings and figure out if it’s the right thing to do, and then just do it even if you’re nervous and go see your counselor and tell them right off the bat that, hey, I’m really, I’m kind of nervous about talking to you,” Said Sullivan.
In the Arlington school district we have a right to confidentiality within the counseling center unless there is a mandatory report. In Lynden Washington they are pushing to pass IL 26-001 the Parental Rights Ballot Title. This ballot is an effect to take away that’s confidentiality between a student and counselor.
It would be like a big invasion of privacy to me, especially if I went out of my way to go talk to a counselor about my feelings and what I have to say and if they just told my parents, that would be a violation to me. Especially with kids with hard situations at home, who don’t want their parents knowing that,”said Sam Marsh (’28).
