Confidentiality Policies and Practices in Regard to Family Involvement: Does Training Make a Difference?

Abstract

Despite the evidence that including families, relatives, friends, and other “significant people” (SP) of mental health clients in treatment and recovery services enhances client outcomes, confidentiality concerns and misconceptions by agency staff remain a major barrier to the implementation of family inclusion efforts for adult clients in behavioral health systems nationally and internationally. This article reports on a survey of providers and administrators regarding their beliefs about sharing information with these significant individuals in clients’ lives in a behavioral health system that is undergoing a system transformation to become more recovery oriented. Furthermore, it describes an agency pilot program that involved clarifying agency confidentiality policies and state regulations or laws, training staff about this information, and assessing the effects of the training. Evaluation results of staff training about these policies are also reported.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of Horizon House, Inc., and their Philadelphia Targeted Case Management program staff in the confidentiality training project. Horizon House was chosen in part because of its long and active commitment to improving family involvement policies and practices. We would also like to thank Jonathan Lukens, MSW, for his assistance with the statistical analyses.