Informed consent practices of school counsellors when working with minors in Newfoundland and Labrador

Palmer, Laura (2015) Informed consent practices of school counsellors when working with minors in Newfoundland and Labrador. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The process of obtaining informed consent can be complex when counselling children and adolescents in a school context. The current study explored informed consent practices among school counsellors (n=123) in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador through distributing surveys to school counsellors in the province via the SurveyMonkey platform. Findings indicated that a majority of school counsellors tended to obtain informed consent from the students they were working with regardless of their students’ ages. Having said that, variation did exist among the school counsellors in terms of what ages they reported to seek informed consent from students. School counsellors working with children (ages 5-11) appear to be more inclined to also involve parents in the informed consent process, whereas the majority of school counsellors working with early adolescents (ages 12-15) and late adolescents (ages 16-18) were less inclined to do so. As well, school counsellors reported parents having less and less access to their children’s counselling information as students became older. Ideas about necessary information to provide through the informed consent process and the level of importance of such pieces of information varied in some cases among participants, suggesting potential variations in informed consent practices. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

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