Confidentiality: Honoring the Letter and the Spirit of the Law

This course is designed to renew agency staffs’ commitment to rigorously honoring policies and procedures regarding confidentiality. Blending direct instruction with a simulation, this course revisits agency and federal protocols through an experiential lens. Topics include clarifying laws and protocols to ensure all staff, clients and community members understand the importance of confidentiality; strategies for addressing minor to severe breaches of confidentiality; prompts for creating an organizational culture that protects clients’ personal identity information and thus maintains the public trust.

Topics include:

  • Reaching a consensus on the definition of terms related to this topic.
  • Linking confidentiality and conflict of interest practices to the helping profession, the law, the policies and procedures of the agency, and living in the community.
  • Identifying & analyzing scenarios based on client & employee confidentiality issues and conflicts of interest.
  • Discovering ways the use of social media impacts confidentiality.
  • Reviewing expectations, and the possible consequences for violations of confidentiality law, policies and practices.
  • “Making the Case” for continuing to build an agency culture which upholds the principles of public trust, linked to the Agency’s Mission.
Course Code
505209