Advice Service Confidentiality Agreement

Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to ensure that information held by the Union of Students Advice Service, is managed appropriately and consistently. The Union of Students Advice Service is a confidential service and staff within the Union of Students Advice Service are committed to ensuring your personal information is protected in line with this policy, the Union of Students Advice Service Advisor Confidentiality Policy and GDPR regulations.

Introduction

The Union of Students Advice Service is a confidential and independent service. Maintaining confidentiality and trust with students is given the highest priority.

In accordance with this, all meetings are held privately and anything a student says will be treated in strict confidence within the team in line with this policy.

This confidentiality is guaranteed, except where one or more of the following statements applies:

• Conflict of Interest - where the Advice Service identifies a potential conflict of interest, which necessitates informing one party that we can no longer act on their behalf this, may draw attention to the fact that we are already acting on behalf of another party.
• Where required to by an Act of Parliament
• Where required to by order of a Court of Law
• We have information indicating a serious risk to a student or others.
• There is a risk to a person who is under the age of 18 or an adult with care and support needs.
• We have information relating to a possible act of terrorism.
• We have information relating to money laundering and/or drug trafficking.
• If a Union of Students Advice Service staff member would be liable to civil or criminal court proceedings if information was not disclosed externally

Student Records

The Union of Students processes personal data in line with UK data protection legislation including UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act (2018) and Data (Use & Access) Act 2025. Information is processed for the purposes of providing advice, support, safeguarding, case management, service administration and statistical reporting. We may also process your data to understand who has engaged with the Union and use this to improve services and identify trends in access, participation and retention.

Advice Pro

All information about students accessing the Union of Students Advice Service is held within Advice Pro, the service’s case management system used to service the needs of students using our advice service. This information can only be accessed by a member of staff within the Union of Students Advice Service, as needed to carry out their duties. The Union of Students Advice Service record system may hold information provided by the student and/or third parties.

The Union may also use WyserAI as part of our AdvicePro package. This is an AI software tool that provides support for recording and documenting case notes. This will not be used for decision making about your case but to support with the administration of keeping our files up to date and accurate.

MSL

The Union may also hold information that you have engaged with the Advice Service within MSL, our membership system. This database will not include any specific information about your case and will only detail that you have used the service. We will use anonymised reporting data to measure and report on trends related to student engagement.

Monday.com

The Union use a work management software to help manage the day-to-day operations of the Advice Service. These digital workspaces will be exclusively accessible to the Union of Students Advice Service to support the running and management of the department.

PeopleSoft

In addition, members of staff within the Union of Students Advice Service have access to some of the information held in the University student record system. Further information on how the Union of Students handles student information can be found on the Union of Students website.

Consent to Share

The sharing of identifiable, personal and sensitive information about you can only happen with your prior consent, except where one or more of the exceptions or processing reasons outlined in this policy apply. This means that you will have to decide who we can share information with and what information that is.

A student can request for information to be shared through the completion of the Union of Students Advice Service consent to share form, which is available upon request from your assigned advisor.

Following consent, the Union of Students Advice Service ensures that the information is shared in line with the agreed information on the consent to share form and that it is shared responsibly and securely.

Internal Information Sharing

Information held within the Union of Students Advice Service may be discussed within the Union of Students Advice Service or their management, for the purposes of supervision, case management, quality assurance, and co-ordinating support for students.

Anonymised or aggregated data may also be used to inform reports and shared in relevant meetings where appropriate to highlight trends, concerns and support resolution. Any such information will not identify individual students. This information may also be shared with other departments within the Union of Students. However, this information will not identify a student.

Where it is necessary to share identifiable information with any other department within the Union, we will not do this without a student’s permission. Where permission cannot be obtained and there is a cause for concern, then limited, factual, information may still be shared.

External Information Sharing

The Union of Students Advice Service will seek to gain a student’s consent before discussing their case with any external agency including University of Derby staff members.

However, there may be occasions when we recognise a student or someone else is at risk of harm and it is in their best interest for the external sharing of information to take place, even if consent cannot be obtained.

Any disclosure of confidential information will be restricted to relevant information and communicated only to appropriate people, for reasons as set out below:

• Conflict of Interest - where the Advice Service identifies a potential conflict of interest, which necessitates informing one party that we can no longer act on their behalf this, may draw attention to the fact that we are already acting on behalf of another party. In these circumstances, the compromised party will be informed of the breach, and no further action will be disclosed.
• Where required to by an Act of Parliament
• Where required to by order of a Court of Law
• We have information indicating a serious risk to a student or others.
• There is a risk to a person who is under the age of 18 or an adult with care and support needs.
• We have information relating to a possible act of terrorism.
• We have information relating to money laundering and/or drug trafficking.
• If a Union of Students Advice Service staff member would be liable to civil or criminal court proceedings if information was not disclosed externally

Anonymised or aggregated data may also be used to inform reports and shared in relevant meetings where appropriate to highlight trends, concerns and support resolution. Any such information will not identify individual students.

The Union Advice Service may be subjected to regular Advice Quality Standard audits to ensure we meet standards. The case records audited are anonymised so no individual person/case can be identified. However, all students selected will be asked for consent ahead of the audit.

Information Sharing and Suicide Prevention

We will only contact people or services, without a person’s consent, when there is significant safety concern and it is believed that this action will protect the person from risk of death or serious harm. This action will only be taken if the person will not provide or consent or they are assessed as having lacking capacity to make the decision at the time.

This relies on effective professional judgment, working with each individual person, to identify the appropriate service/person, who are best situated, to protect them from risk of death or serious harm.

The decision to share information, without consent, will only be made by the Advice Manager and this decision would be in conjunction with the student's primary advisor. In the absence of the Advice Manager, the advisor would discuss the potential information share with the Membership Engagement Manager or CEO.

Access to Records

Students’ have a right to any information stored about them. The only exception to this is if the disclosure of information would be likely to cause serious harm to physical or mental health or which would breach the confidentiality of another person. If the decision is made to without information, justified reason will be recorded.

If a student wishes to have access to the information stored about them by the Union of Students Advice Service or they wish us to share information with a third person, they should discuss this with a member of the Union of Students Advice Service team. Alternatively, students can directly request access to their data or to uphold their rights by completing one of the following forms:

• Subject Access Request
• Data Subject Rights Request

We will not provide access to our records if requested by other parties unless directed by a court order.

Retention of Records

All records will be retained for six years from the end of the academic year in which a student’s case is closed by the Union of Student’s Advice Service. At the end of this time, records all personal identifiable information are deleted securely from the casefile. If a student wishes to withdraw consent to their records being stored, this can be done by completing the Data Subject Rights Request. This will be considered in line with UK GDPR, safeguarding responsibilities and legal obligations.

Conflict of Interest: student on student

In some circumstances, the Advice Service may be supporting both parties in a dispute.

The confidentially agreement signed by advisors ensures advisors do not discuss these cases amongst each other.  Where there is a conflict of interest, the advisors will restrict access to their casefiles on AdvicePro, ensuring that only themselves and the Advice and SVLO Manager can access it.

Any students accessing the service will be informed of the conflict-of-interest policy – that both parties have the right to access the service but that measures will be taken to ensure that advisors do not share information regarding either of the student’ case information. The student can then decide whether they would like to continue seeking support from the service or whether they would prefer to be signposted externally.

When mediation work is undertaken, both parties will understand the advisor is working towards a shared goal of resolution and will be aware of both sides of the dispute.