Contracting and confidentiality in the peer accompaniment context 

Contracting is an important element of any accompaniment relationship, and is essential for establishing boundaries and safety. It also helps to ensure expectations are understood and mutually shared.

We will be covering this in more depth as the year progresses, but for now notice how your group tutor contracts with you in your sessions with them, and how this feels for you.

Take time to practice this element with your peer companion. Ensure your contract is clear and shared, and practice the skills of intention setting, pre-work to prepare yourself, and inner opening.

You must also specifically address confidentiality when contracting. 

When writing up your notes, remember that clients have the right to ask to read your notes about them, which very occasionally happens. Remember that the confidentiality of your work with your peer, and the notes you make about these sessions, is an important aspect of the skills you will be learning and practising.

When writing up your case studies do not mention the client’s name. Only the issues, not the individual, will be discussed at supervision.

(While tutors will know the identity of your peer, it is still good practice to maintain this approach as if they do not. If tutors or supervisors are concerned about the “student client” as a result of reading or hearing case notes they will ask the student companion to ask the client for permission to pass on their name. If tutors or supervisors feel this code has been, or has to be, broken for any reason they will inform both student companions and student clients).

Please use the confidentiality statement below and discuss it with your client before spiritual accompaniment takes place.  

OneSpirit’s Confidentiality Statement

We understand that sometimes information is regarded as sensitive and private, and we want to respect that. Please be aware that sometimes we may need to share information internally, with colleagues, in order to ensure we provide you and others the necessary support. We will explain why and how such information is to be shared in such cases, and who with, so that you have the opportunity to withhold permission.

We may also need to breach confidentiality in extreme circumstances such as:

• A serious risk to your own health and welfare.

• If your behaviour presents a serious risk to the legal rights of others.

• When staff have been placed in a position that compromises their professional integrity

• When disclosure is required by law.

If any of the above circumstances were to arise, we would seek to discuss the situation with you before breaching confidentiality, although this may not be possible in certain circumstances where safeguarding has to take priority.

Trust helps to create and protect a sacred space, a sense of being held safely. OneSpirit recognises the need for an approach to confidentiality that encourages individual openness while establishing best practice in how and when personal information is held and shared.

Confidentiality within the Training Context

Our tutors and operations staff need to share relevant information about students and course participants in order to provide the best possible care and support. This can take the form of notes on our secure password protected databases, discussion in meetings or internal forums and secure messaging platforms, including email. Any conversation or written communication may be shared unless specifically requested by an individual student not to do so. A request for confidentiality will be respected unless there are legal or contractual reasons not to do so, or safeguarding concerns that must take precedence. If confidentiality cannot be maintained the individual will be informed as soon as possible.

Confidentiality Between Minister and Client

OneSpirit ministers will not discuss privileged conversations outside OneSpirit’s legitimate forums of support, for example in supervision, and then by focusing on the issues and only identifying the individuals concerned when absolutely necessary.

In contracting with clients, OneSpirit ministers will explain the limits of confidentiality and what their clients can expect.

All students are taught OneSpirit’s Confidentiality statement and are encouraged to adapt this for their own use following ordination.

Confidentiality and the Law

Three aspects of UK law impact on this document; Data Protection Act, Terrorism Act, and the Children Act 2014. There are legal requirements with regard to disclosure, mainly related to terrorism, child abuse and data protection.

Case Study 1: Guidance 

Due 19 January

Case Study 1 is a guided review of your first sessions with your second year peer counsellor. It includes 6 sessions: 3 where you are the counsellor/ accompanier, and 3 where you are the client of your peer. Use the guidelines below to work through the assignment. Re-read all of materials in the Companion that relate to Spiritual Counselling/ Accompaniment, including the Peer Counselling Guidance notes in this Gateway, will help your attunement.

This work is rooted in your holding your client and yourself in a Sacred Contract in the Presence of the God of your Understanding. As you are invited to pray before, during and after any work as either counsellor or client, you will find that bringing that same stance to this Case Study 1 will  deepen it, and more likely make it easier too. In whatever way is yours, pray that your undertaking this Case Study 1 benefits you sincerely in your learning journey as a OneSpirit spiritual counsellor/ accompanier, and minister. That is the purpose of this piece of work: for you as a minister and counsellor- in- training to deepen your understanding of and confidence and competence in your practice. Your prayers will be answered. Whilst you have the privilege of being able to focus on a peer as your ‘case study’ the purpose of the case study is YOUR development. Your deepening understanding of your own learning journey will also benefit your client. Enjoy the process! It’s very satisfying, even if it’s a new field you’re ploughing here. You are ready.

Please follow this requested format, and with the headings noted in bullet points below.  

Upload your case study via the student portal by 19 January

Please submit your work in 2000 – 2500 word: approx 4 pages in total in size 11/12 font with normal margin, made up of the following  5 headings:

1. Content Summary of the three sessions where you are the counsellor (max 3/4 of a page in total)
2. Process Summary of the three sessions where you are the counsellor (max 3/4 of a page in total)
3. Learning Review (max 1 ½ pages in total)
4. Reflection on the learnings through the process of supervision (max ½ page in total)
5. Reflection on the process of being a client to your peer for three sessions (max ½ page in total)

• Record the dates and timings of the 6 sessions
• Refer to your peer as ‘my peer’ or ‘my client’ or ‘x’ rather than using their name and when you are writing as the peer counsellor.

Further guidance on each of the 5 headings above follows below.

1. Write a Content Summary (max 3/4 of a page in total) from the perspective of the counsellor of all three sessions, seeing all three as a whole, using your session notes to guide your input.

Please include:

• the presenting issue: what is the overt, usually directly expressed theme or issue, or cluster of themes/ issues,  that your peer brings to the sessions. For example: conflict with partner or someone else; ongoing anxiety or any other health challenge in self or others; overwhelm with the course or work or life; etc

• the underlying issue: what is the issue that you sense, or that your client may also express or may not be aware of, that is under the surface, and is perhaps more at the root of the presenting issue. For example: having no control over health outcomes of others yet being personally impacted; present time conflicts being based in early life distress with a key carer; loneliness; a life pattern of experiencing rejection, etc

• the primal lie and the main defences of your peer client: what is the core mistaken identity (primal lie), or wound or negative self- concept that your client maybe holds? And in what ways does your client protect themselves (their defences) from feeling the pain of the negative self- concept, by whatever name you give it? Examples of primal lies: I am nothing, I am not good enough, I am wrong, I am too much, I am not enough. Examples of defences: continually busy, rescuing others, condemnation of others, othering, bias, reactivity, stuck in victim, persecutor or rescuer roles, cynicism, all addictions, judgement, projection, arrogance, false humility, gossiping, passive and overt aggression, control, etc.

Please write about your own impressions of these areas and what brings you to these conclusions in a way that doesn’t breach the confidentiality of your peer through unnecessarily disclosing private information.

The content summary, when read over, will give you a good overview of the territory you were in with your client, and a very broad summary of the shape of the session/s, as well as the attempt to name the elements requested above.

2. Write a Process Summary (max three quarters of a page in total) from the perspective of the counsellor of all three sessions, seeing all three as a whole, using your session notes to guide your input. Please include, along with your other reflections, your tracking of the way in which you received guidance (or whatever your language is for this impulse) before, during and after the sessions. Where the Content Summary is a bit like laying out the framework of what is above and what is below the surface of the ocean, the Process Summary is a bit more like the ocean itself. It is the inner process, the feelings, the shape, the less rational, the tone, the mood, the whole environment of how your client body and its posture in the world, their timing, their mood, and so forth. It’s a deep observation of what you see, hear, sense, intuit and notice, including things that appear to be juxtaposed, or incongruent, or for some reason drawing your attention. The Process Summary is also the place where you describe the impact of your holding of the session and the impact – as you observe it through your client’s response – of your reflections, warmth, empathy, questions, and so forth.

3. Meditate upon your development as a student of spiritual counselling/ accompaniment and then write a Learning Review on the basis of the following four headings: (max 1 1/2 pages in total). These headings follow a structure known as the Conscience Competence Learning model, which you can read about here: https://www.revolutionlearning.co.uk/article/conscious-competence-learning-model/

• Those things that I have integrated into my learning (unconsciously skilled – they have become second nature): for example: I now really understand why we contract and would not begin without one; I can now accurately practice reflection

• Those things that I am presently consolidating (consciously skilled – I have to think about it, but I do this): for example: I’m much closer now to asking questions that help the client to deepen rather than feed my curiosity; I have a checklist that I keep my eye on that keeps me focussed on slowing down and inviting a deeper listening than my usual mind

• Those things that I am developing my understanding of more fully (consciously unskilled – I’m actively working towards being able to do this). For example: I’m seeing how positively different I am in a session when I have spent a few minutes before it centering myself and opening to Spirit – and I’m still struggling to value this enough to overcome my habit of rushing from thing to thing; I’m seeing how my own worldviews and my own need to be wanted and liked wants to dominate the way the session unfolds: learning to be fully with my client is a big learning discipline

• Those things that are opening up to me (just emerging from unconsciously unskilled– it’s come into my awareness that this is something I want to be able to do) For example: I’m just opening to the impact of my own spiritual practice, and its impact throughout my day, and thus on my sessions too, and want to deepen this; I’m becoming aware how much I still tend to give advice and talk about my own equivalent material and feel as if I need to have an answer; I’m seeing that I’m a habitual rescuer and have so much to learn to heal myself in this stance so that I can sit steady with my client

4. Reflect on the learnings through the process of supervision, recording your learning through the supervision you received (max 1/2 a page), whether from a peer, or a formal supervisor.

5. Reflect on the process of being a client: what have you learned from being a client that will help you as a counsellor/ accompanier (max ½ page). For example: What does it feel like to be a client? What is the work the client has to be willing to do? What are the things a client can do to make it harder to reach their intention, and easier? Are there defences you’ve noticed yourself using as a client that keep you feeling more in control or safer but also maybe more risk and learning and healing averse? What do you know about the roots of your defences,  and what helps them to soften?

Complete three sessions as companion with your spiritual accompaniment peer for your ‘in-house’ case study and write up notes from the companion’s perspective, using the guidelines.

Receive three spiritual accompaniment sessions as client with your peer and write up notes from the client’s perspective.

Reflect on the spiritual accompaniment foundation skills of self-awareness and reflection.

Case Study 1 is due by 19 January 2024 (further guidance will be shared soon).  

You will need to engage in at least one online group supervision to support Case Study 1. 

Spiritual Accompaniment with your peer

Give and receive 50-60 minute sessions with your new spiritual accompaniment peer and write notes from the counsellor and client perspective.

Ensure your contract is clear and shared, and practice the skills of intention setting, pre-work to prepare yourself, and inner opening.

By the end of the year you need to have given and received 7 sessions. This means you need to do one set of sessions (i.e. giving and receiving) per month. There will be an exercise reflecting on the process which needs to be completed before Gateway 5.

These are formal spiritual accompaniment sessions, not conversations, and you are urged to start the relationship with clear contracting, and with as open a heart as possible, setting aside your ideas about who your peer is.

• Start with a prayer, silence, devotional practice or meditation.
• Give particular attention to your own and your peer’s relationship with the Divine.
• Engage in agreeing the practicalities of timing and the medium of communication in order to practice contracting with clients in the future.
• Take time to establish an agreement around confidentiality, using the OneSpirit confidentiality statement (see below).
• Focus on a deepening understanding of each other, maybe using your first year Creation assignment and your Lifeline, if you still have it, as a way to build a doorway into who you are.
• Include your impressions of any aspects of the second year opening residential.
• Focus on connecting and gently deepening connection with each other. Seek to clear yourself of assumptions about each other, based on the year passed: open to a new beginning.

Write-up notes of half a page to a page, both from the perspective of receiving and giving the sessions.

Whilst these notes are confidential to you, it is essential to understand that clients have the right to ask to read your notes about them, which occasionally happens. We will discuss this further in class.

Your notes are essential for your own self supervision, and they will help you when the time comes to write up Case Study 1 and 2, and when you write up your understanding of Spiritual Counselling/Accompaniment at the end of the year. The confidentiality of your work with your peer, and the notes you make about these sessions, is an important aspect, and will be discussed further as this is a nuanced situation.

The first six sessions (3 as counsellor and 3 as client) constitute Case Study 1, so pay close attention to note-taking and self-supervision of this process. You are required to attend at least one group supervision session during this period.

We will take time together to look in more detail at the role of peer and group supervision in supporting your ministry. 

You should use the confidentiality statement below and discuss it with your client before counselling takes place. When writing up your case studies do not mention the client’s name and only the issues, not the individual, will be discussed at supervision. (While tutors will of course know the identity of your peer, it is still good practice to maintain this approach as if they do not. If tutors or supervisors are concerned about the “student client” as a result of reading or hearing case notes they will ask the student counsellor to ask the client for permission to pass on their name. If tutors or supervisors feel this code has been, or has to be, broken for any reason they will inform both student counsellors and student clients).

OneSpirit’s confidentiality statement:

Our confidentiality statement is:

• We understand that sometimes information is regarded as sensitive and private and we want to respect that.
• Please be aware that sometimes we may need to share information internally, with colleagues, in order to ensure we provide you and others the necessary support. We will explain why and how such information is to be shared in such cases, and who with, so that you have the opportunity to withhold permission.
• We may also need to breach confidentiality in extreme circumstances such as:
  • A serious risk to your own health and welfare.
  • If your behaviour presents a serious risk to the legal rights of others.
  • When staff have been placed in a position that compromises their professional integrity
  • When disclosure is required by law.
  • If any of the above circumstances were to arise, before any decision was made to breach confidentiality, the situation would be discussed with you.