Terms and Conditions
Call 000 for all emergency services
If you are thinking about committing suicide, harming yourself or someone else please contact 000 and know that there are people available who care and want to help you – you are not alone.
Age Restriction
All users must be over 18 years of age. If there are parents who would like their children to have access to our services, parents will need to contact our office in order to discuss option
Sessions & Fees
- Our counselling messaging service can be structured to occur at a specific time or unlimited. Please refer to your package specifics.
- In return for a fee, HappinessFirst agrees to provide counselling services to you. No GST included or collected.
- Packages are charged monthly in advanced. You must pay before using our service. Payment can be made using credit cards, direct deposit or via other arrangements if agreed with by management..
- Sessions can take the form of messaging, voice recording or video calls.
First Contact
During the first session of counselling, your counsellor will:
- explain more about the process of counselling, including their specific way of working
- reiterate confidentiality and boundaries
- discuss timings of sessions and the importance of punctuality
- come to an initial agreement on the number of sessions
- highlight the procedure for cancelling an appointment – both by you and the counsellor
- talk about other matters such as tasks you are requested to carry out between sessions.
Cancellation Policy & Money Back Guarantee
HappinessFirst is completely committed to offering everyone the best possible service but if you are not satisfied, let us know and we will try to accommodate where possible, if not you can request for an immediate cancelation of your service. So you will be immediately refunded what you haven’t used.
Code of ethics
- Clients have the right to a competent and professional service.
- The counsellor reserves the right to refer clients to other professional services when they consider this course of action to be in the best interests of the client.
Confidentiality and exceptions
Respecting our client’s confidentiality is of the utmost importance to us. Clients have the right to a private and confidential service, within the following limits,
If the counsellor;
- believes the client to be at risk of harming him/herself or harming others
- is subpoenaed by a Court of Law
- obtains written permission from the client to release information, or
- believes there is abuse of children, then it’s a mandatory reporting offence and the counsellor is bound by law to report
Boundaries
No contact is permitted with your counsellor outside the therapeutic relationship of the counselling session. Physical contact is inappropriate at any time. Occasionally counsellors may suggest tasks for you to work on between sessions. This should be seen as important and therefore not treated lightly. Counsellors are not qualified to help or advise clients in respect of certain practical aspects of the presenting issues, such as housing, entitlement to statutory benefits, or legal advice. It is not the policy of our organisation to provide reports in support of litigation.
Records
Standard professional procedure requires that summary notes be made by your counsellor. These and all client records are kept in a secure location. Clients have the right to access their own records, on request.
Complaints
If at any time you are dissatisfied with the services of HappinessFirst, please discuss it with your counsellor. Should you require a referral to another professional, your counsellor will discuss this with you. If you believe that any professional conduct is inappropriate, you may report your complaints to the Australian Counselling Association (ACA).
Renegotiation
This is a working agreement aimed at providing you and your counsellor with boundaries and a structure within which to work. It is also possible to renegotiate this agreement or add other agreements in the course of the counselling contact, as agreed by both client and counsellor.
Consent
As the entire therapeutic relationship is built on trust and openness between the client and the counsellor, a binding contract will not be effective until you have had an opportunity to read, consider and query any aspects of these terms and conditions. Only then will you be invited to sign a copy for our records.
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Privacy Policy
Who we are
Our website address is: http://www.happinessfirst.com.au.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms – Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
Who we share your data with / How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
