Lifeline Services' Proven Capability to Offer Immediate Solutions to Mental Health Problems - Case Study Example

Report - analysis of policy Summary Lifeline services have proved to be an inevitable part of the modern man’s life due to their proven capability to offer immediate solutions to the mental health problems of callers all over the world. This report analyses the Anonymity policy of the Lifeline service in Australia and the conclusions of the report point out how the Anonymity policy of the organization has ensured higher level of privacy and confidentiality to all its clients. In analyzing the policy of the Lifeline in Australia, special efforts are made to show why many clients prefer tele counseling to face to face counseling. The anonymity policy of the organization is elaborately dealt with in the report and the report seeks to offer certain recommendations based on the findings of the analysis of the policy. Introduction The significance of lifeline services have increased immensely as the modern man’s life has become more complex, more problems centered, tensed and emotionally turbulent. In this respect, the tele-counseling services of lifeline 13 11 14 in Australia deserves primary importance as the Australian lifeline answers around 450,000 calls per year from people needing emotional support from almost all parts of the nation. For over 45 years Lifeline has provided Australians with access telephone counselling service for mental health support. Counseling involves a partnership between a client and a mental health professional “such as a psychologist who is licensed and trained to help people understand their feelings, and assist them with changing their behavior” (Counselling and Therapy). All lifeline staffs are trained to deal with Lifeline callers. The customer friendly policies of the Lifeline in Australia make it unique and approachable to all sects of people: the services of the lifeline are open to all and it offers counseling service that ‘respects everyone’s right to be heard, understood and cared for” (Lifeline: About 13 11 14. 2008 ). The lifeline offers services on many sensitive issues such as family and relationship issues, mental health concerns, suicide prevention and support, abuse and violence, loneliness and life direction, taking into account the fact that the needs of the people can vary “genders and age groups and between rural and metropolitan areas” (Lifeline: About 13 11 14. 2008 ). The major aim of the lifeline telephone counselors is to provide emotional support to the needy customers in order to enable them to face the challenges of life rather than running away from them. This report analyses the Anonymity policy of the Lifeline in Australia and no doubt it is the anonymity policy of the organization that attracts callers from every nook and corner of the nation to the services provided by the organization. The Anonymity policy of the organization primarily aims at protecting the caller’s privacy and confidentiality which is fundamental to the way Lifeline cares for people. Policy of Anonymity at Lifeline Protecting the customer privacy and confidentiality is an essential prerequisite for any type of counseling process. Without ensuring the confidentiality of the customers, one can never expect the customers to be open, free and sincere in sharing the problems and issues that torment them. Thus, Lifeline takes special efforts to ensure 100% confidentiality to all the callers and for this the policy of anonymity is effectively carried out by the organization. The lifeline’s privacy policy has strong roots in the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) in the Commonwealth Privacy Act (1988). The anonymity policy of the life line is designed with a view to enhance the privacy and confidentiality of the callers and the Anonymity policy has been benefited by many callers who choose to remain anonymous when calling lifeline. Due to the Anonymity policy of the lifeline, “callers to the Lifeline telephone counselling service are not required to give their name or other information about their personal identity in order to receive service”; however, lifeline’s anonymity policy does not guarantee anonymous service for the caller even though it ensures high level of confidentiality to all its callers (Lifeline Telephone Counselling Privacy Statement 2008). As part of the Anonymity policy, lifeline does not record the demographic information of the callers unless the callers themselves consent to it. Lifeline has clear cut policies regarding what sort of information are to be collected from the callers and for what purposes they are to be made use of. The anonymity policy of the lifeline emphasizes that the organization should only “collect information that is considered necessary for the provision of a quality counseling service, or for directly related secondary purposes” and these include information about a person’s health, disability, or use of health services, caller situation, his/her age, gender, postcode of the caller, current marital status, employment situation, current living standards, and the first language of the caller (Lifeline Telephone Counselling Privacy Statement 2008). In short, lifeline collects only those information from the callers that are useful for offering better services to the clients. The use and disclosure policies of lifeline are equally competent as that of its anonymity policy or rather they add better credibility to its anonymity policy. Lifeline maintains high confidentiality and offers anonymity to all its callers except in cases where the “caller is at imminent risk of injury or death by suicide”; “a caller makes specific threats to harm third parties”; “a caller is at imminent risk of injury or death by another person”; “there are reasonable grounds for believing that child abuse is occurring and/or where an intervention may be required to ensure a child's safety”; “situations where there is a legal imperative to provide information” and in “circumstances where it is necessary to discuss matters related to the call or caller for the purposes of providing the best possible service to the client, including through supervision processes or to ensure the safety and well-being of telephone counselors” (Lifeline Telephone Counselling Privacy Statement 2008) . The disclosure of the personal information provided by the customer is revealed only with the consent of the customer or only when it becomes necessary for the prevention of “a serious or imminent threat to someone’s life, health or safety” (Lifeline Telephone Counselling Privacy Statement 2008) . The anonymity policy of the lifeline also pays special attention to data security and confidentiality through the prevention of data misuse and loss, unauthorized access and modifications or disclosure. This process of the data security is achieved through high level of competent computer system safeguards that include password protection and controlled user access. In short, the caller information is made use of only within the organization-that too for the purpose of further researches or supervision or better counseling results. Similarly, the organization does not provide the full telephone numbers and contact details of callers even to the telephone counselors. In no cases the calls from the customers will not be recorded without prior permission and consent and they will never be transferred to outside Australia without the permission of the callers. Similarly, lifeline in Australia also provides the callers the privilege to know of their client records and thus makes the counseling process transparent and reliable for the callers. Discussion The anonymity policy adopted by the organization has strong theoretical backgrounds. Many people are uncomfortable talking about their personal problems while in the physical presence of another, and may be more likely to disclose when they cannot be seen. This effect is called disinhibition. Thus, telephone counseling may allow for more privacy and confidentiality than that of traditional face to face counseling. In the same way, many callers seeking telephone counseling do not have an active relationship with a counselor and use telephone counseling as a substitute for therapy. The advantages of telephone counseling are manifold and many callers make use of telephone counseling services as they know for certain that their anonymity will be kept intact. The following quote throws light on the positive aspects of telephone counseling and its anonymous nature: “It was generally perceived that tele counselling services offered the following benefits: anonymity and confidentiality which made the caller feel comfortable and confident to seek other help; quick and immediate response; showing the caller that they are not alone and that someone cares; ease of accessibility; 24hr help; the ability to assist a suicidal person; general cost and time-effectiveness; the sense of control it gives the caller when they know they can ‘hang up’ at any time; and the non-intimidating aspect of removing oneself from face-to-face contact” (Community and stakeholder perceptions of tele counselling services 2002 p. 97) Telephone counseling offers an added advantage to the needy clients due to its higher and immediate accessibility, anonymous and confidential nature over face to face counseling. Usually, clients feel better at ease while talking with a lifeline counselor as they can very easily get beyond their human inhibition and natural inclination to remain in the cocoon of their own personal physical and psychological domain. It has been identified that telephone counseling helps in “early intervention, crisis intervention and prevention of re-occurrence of a problem” and thus it plays “an important role in the continuum of health and welfare services, providing immediate counselling, support, information or referral in crisis and non-crisis situations”(Counselling guidelines & standards 2007). For any counseling to be effective there should be a one to one relationship between the counselor and the clients. As Geldard & Geldard (1998) rightly puts it: "For counselling to be maximally effective, the client must feel secure in the knowledge that what they tell the counsellor is to be treated with a high degree of confidentiality. In an ideal world a client would be offered total confidentiality so that they would feel free to openly explore with the counsellor the darkest recesses of their mind, and to discuss the most intimate details of their thoughts." (Geldard & Geldard 1998) There are some ethical codes that each counselor needs to follow during the counseling process. Each councilor should respect the “worth and dignity of all people” and this should be reflected in his/her work; this necessitates that counselors “cause no harm to clients during the counselling process” and that they “respect the privacy of their clients and preserve the confidentiality of information acquired in the course of their work” (Code of Ethics p. 3). Thus it is necessary to protect the clients’ information and identity; any information that would reveal the true identity of the clients is to be treated with utmost confidentiality. With this view in mind the counselors at the lifeline “work to provide an atmosphere of safety and openness to enable the caller to explore their feelings and problems. This provides an opportunity for the counsellor and the caller to consider the various alternatives that might be available to the caller in seeking to cope with their problem or in finding solutions for their problem. This process works to empower callers for their future based on informed choices. Lifeline’s model of confidential counselling affords counsellors and callers the opportunity to enter into a unique relationship of one to one, person-to-person communication” (Lifeline Calls: An insight into community concerns 2004 p. 3). It can be attributed to the credit of lifeline services in Australia that it could bring many people who thought of committing suicides back to the normal life. With the changed life style and social life of people, the rates of mental health issues have increased considerably. The lifeline statistics reveal that mental health problems and suicidal trends are higher among customers in remote and rural areas than in metropolitan and in regional areas and subsequently, rural callers with mental health issues are more likely to resort to the services of lifeline. (Lifeline Calls: Profile of Rural and Metropolitan Telephone Counsellling Service Users 2005 p. 1). Thus, the above discussed points clearly reinforce the fact that a sound policy of anonymity that offers privacy and confidentiality lie at the heart of ant telephone counseling services and that the Lifeline in Australia does maintain a credulous and trustworthy anonymity policy of its own. Conclusions Having elaborately analyzed the various aspects of the anonymity policy of the Lifeline in Australia, one can easily come to the conclusion that the policy offers better privacy and confidentiality to all the callers who want to protest their personal identities and would like to remain as anonymous. However, the policy has also provisions to disclose the personal information of the caller in times of necessity under the conditions that are already mentioned. The increasing number of callers to lifeline in Australia underlies the effectiveness of its anonymity policy and there should be more awareness programs by which the privacy policies of lifeline services reach handy to more callers so that they can approach the organization for services without any sorts of fear or inhibitions. Recommendations The analysis of the anonymity brings to light some areas of concern too. However strong may be the anonymity policy of the organization, the real success of life line services lie in having skilled and trained tele counselling service staffs who are better quipped to grasp the mental health problems of the client. A major concern in this area is the possible lack of continuity of the services offered as the same caller is likely to receive services from different staffs each time he or she makes the calls. Besides, the organization needs to makes a continuous follow up on its anonymity policy with a view to make any necessary changes to its policies as and when such changes are necessary. There should be a centralized supervising team to monitor any sort of misuse of the customer information. Bibliography Counselling and Therapy: Individual Psychotherapy. [online]. Center for Personal Development. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.chicagotherapist.com/individual_psychotherapy.htm Lifeline: About 13 11 14. (2008). [online]. Lifeline Australia. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.lifeline.org.au/find_help/24_hour_counselling_service Lifeline Telephone Counselling Privacy Statement. (25 June 2007). [online]. Lifeline Australia 2008. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.lifeline.org.au/lib/privacy Counselling guidelines & standards. (2007). [online]. Victorian Government Health Information. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.health.vic.gov.au/telephone/counselling.htm Geldard. D. & Geldard K., 1998. Basic Personal Counselling, 4th edition, Frenchs Forest, Prentice Hall. Code of Ethics. [online]. Counselling Association Of South Australia Inc. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.casa.asn.au/docs/code_of_ethics_2002.pdf Lifeline Calls: An insight into community concerns. Profile N0. 1. (August 2004). [online]. Lifeline Australia. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.lifeline.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/7898/lifeline_calls_profile_no_1.pdf Lifeline Calls: Profile of Rural and Metropolitan Telephone Counsellling Service Users. ( March 2005). [online]. Lifeline Australia. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.lifeline.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/7896/lifeline_calls_profile_no_2.pdf Community and stakeholder perceptions of tele counselling services. (2002). [online]. Tele Web Counselling. Last Accessed 3 January 2008 at: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/E82FC46AF0BBE758CA2570DB0082CD66/$File/tele8.pdf Read More