Boundaries

‍Every successful relationship starts with a clear set of boundaries. Your relationship with Spill is no different. Boundaries make sure you don't expect us to be something we're not.

As with all products, using Spill means you agree to these boundaries, as well as our Privacy Policy and Platform T&Cs.

We are not an immediate crisis service and we don't employ staff to be on call. We're also not a medical service. If you think you're having an emotional crisis, please call the NHS 111 for non-emergency advice. If you think you might harm yourself or someone else, please call the Samaritans on 116 123, ring 999 or go straight to A&E.

If you request that we contact you, using the I'd like to be contacted button in the Slack app, we'll do our best to be in touch within two or three hours. However, we can't guarantee this, so please don't use Spill as a crisis service.

Spill counsellors are able to support you if you want to keep on top of your emotional wellbeing. They can work with you if you experience anxiety, depression, or other mental health problems, so long as you're able to manage your wellbeing day-to-day and aren't considering causing harm to yourself or others. If you need more support than Spill can offer, we will work with you to help you find that support.

According to UK law, our counsellors have to contact the emergency services if they believe you might hurt yourself or someone else, or if you mention terrorism or money laundering. If you're involved in a crime, a UK court might ask us to share any information we have on you and we'd legally have to agree, even if all the information we hold about you is your session booking details.

All of our counsellors are required by the Ethical Guidelines to have a clinical supervisor. Counsellors may discuss some of their work with their clinical supervisor, but if they do, they must keep you anonymous. This means they won't tell their clinical supervisors anything that could identify you - they will only discuss clinical matters, such as what technique to employ or how they can support you better.

If your practitioner feels a bit concerned about you (for instance, if you miss a session without notice after discussing a difficult situation with them), then they will seek advice from other clinicians in the service, such as the Spill Clinical Supervisor or the Clinical Director, as is standard clinical practice. This means they’ll share a summary of their concerns, which may also be shared with other Spill therapists you speak with in the future: but the information remains confidential within the service.

After seeking advice, they may get in touch with you, to make sure you're OK. They will use the email address and phone number you gave Spill when you booked the session or any other contact details you gave them directly. We will never tell your employer or anyone else if this happens, unless you ask us to.

So we do require before you begin Spill therapy that you provide us with an emergency contact. In all but very few cases, we never need to use this. However, it does provide us with an extra level of security.

Please let your counsellor know during the consultation if you'd like us to do anything else in case we feel concerned about you, such as call a friend or family member.

Therapy is not advice. Our counsellors can't tell you how to live your life. (Nor would you want them to.) Therapy is about helping you find your own answers.

Both Spill and our counsellors will use their training and clinical experience to offer you the best guidance and mental health support possible. When you send us a question through the Ask a Therapist or the Ask a Therapist about others feature, our counsellors will give you their thoughts about the sorts of things you might want to consider, given the limited information you shared. Where we feel that your question would be better addressed in a therapy session, we'll say so in our reply. If we are concerned about you, we may encourage you to work with us to find further support. Or it may be that during therapy our counsellors ask you questions that challenge your assumptions. None of these things mean that we're telling you what to do. Your choices define you, so we can't make them for you.

The language Spill and our counsellors use will always make this boundary clear. If you ever feel that this isn't so, please let us know at therapy@spill.chat.

We take the privacy and security of your data very seriously. We're GDPR compliant. We monitor the quality of service that our counsellors provide, and make sure they stick to the Ethical Framework set out by the BACP, the UK's largest counselling body.

All of our counsellors are insured and practice under UK law. If you are based in a different country, this means any legal action would have to be raised in a UK court. Obviously, we hope it will never get to this.

If you're not sure about something, have any questions, or would like to give us feedback, just drop us an email at hi@spill.chat. We respond within one working day.

If you wish to raise a therapeutic concern or complaint about a counsellor, please email complaints@spill.chat privately and securely. We begin a full investigation for any report sent to this email address.

Equally, we require that you treat any Spill counsellor with courtesy, and respect their personal and professional boundaries. In extreme cases, the counsellor may end your session early. In the same way that you can ask not to be paired with a specific counsellor, if a counsellor tells us that you haven't treated them with respect, we may allocate you to a different counsellor for future sessions. We don't take sides, but we do take any report of inappropriate behaviour seriously - from either our clients or our counsellors.

We understand the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and it’s not always possible to stick to plans. However, last minute cancellations mean lost therapy sessions - for you, for your therapist, and for anyone who could have used that session instead.

This is why we need 24 hours’ notice if you can’t attend your therapy sessions with Spill. If you can’t make a session, just reschedule using the link available in the confirmation email, or email us as soon as you know you can’t make it.

If you give us 24 hours’ notice, you can just reschedule the session for another time. If you cancel late, or arrive late for the session, we’re going to have to count that session as used, whether you were there or not (we always pay counsellors for booked sessions).

Also, if you are having a course of therapy and miss more than two consecutive sessions, we’re going to automatically cancel the remaining therapy sessions. This is because we hate wasting therapy sessions, when there are so many people out there who need it.

We do everything we can on our end, to make sure Spill therapy sessions run smoothly. However, some things are on you.

You’re responsible for finding a private and safe location wherein to have your session, a space where you can speak without fear of being overheard or interrupted.

You’re also responsible for letting those around you know that you don’t want to be interrupted during your therapy session.

Finally, you need to make sure you have a good enough internet connection to attend the session, as poor internet connections may affect the quality of your session. So please have a look at our troubleshooting tips, if your internet connection is poor. We’ll also try to help. If your therapy session is considerably disrupted by having a bad connection and your counsellor informs us that you’ve missed a significant proportion of your session because of that, we will happily re-arrange that session for you.