Guidelines on Pre-Trial Therapy and Notes Disclosure

Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust follows the Crown Prosecution Service (“CPS”) Pre-Trial Therapy Guidance (CPS, May 2022).
This means that there are times we don’t need your consent to share your personal information or therapy notes with the police.

Accessing therapy

• The CPS pre-trial therapy guidance (“Guidance”) says that your health and wellbeing should always come first in decisions about therapy services while you wait for a court date. Waiting to go to court can be stressful and distressing.
• The Guidance says you should make decisions about therapy with your therapist. Including the best type of therapy and when you have it. People from TEWV, the police or the CPS, should only tell you what therapy is available.
• The Guidance says that it is important that anyone who has experienced a crime should know they can have support for their emotional and psychological needs before, during and after any potential case going to court. You don’t have to wait while the police are working or you are waiting for a court date.
• It is important know that the police or the CPS can ask to see your therapy notes if they are important to your case. Your rights are explained below.

Looking after your information

• Therapists must understand and stick to data protection laws and guidelines when working with personal data. Personal data means information that could tell people who you are that comes up during appointments. Data protection legislation means the laws that say how your personal data must be looked after. It must be kept private in a safe place.
• At the beginning of therapy therapists must tell you how your personal data will be kept safe. You can object to this. Your therapist should mention that information provided to them or recorded by them could be given to to police and used as evidence under specific circumstances. You may consent to share information with law enforcement agencies such as the police, or to object to that happening. If you don’t consent or object to your information being shared, we will think about this while we decide whether it is ‘necessary and proportionate’ to show the police your notes. ‘Necessary and proportionate’ means that your notes really are important for your case. This is in line with the Trust’s Requests for Information procedure. You should receive a copy of the Trust’s Privacy Notice at the start of your therapy which explains this further.

Requests from the police to access therapy notes

The Guidance states that if the police ask to see therapy notes, they should have asked you if you have had any therapy since the crime and whether the incident was discussed. If they decide it would be useful to see your notes they should:
o Be sure that seeing your notes is a “reasonable line of inquiry”. That means that the investigator thinks the notes may contain information which is important to the investigation or the trial and is needed to build their case. Police must have a specific reason to believe that seeing your notes is important.
o Ask Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust if there is anything in your therapy notes that fits with their reason.
o Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust will ask for evidence from the police to back up their request for your notes.
o Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust will look at the police request and tell them that the notes will not be shared if their request isn’t exact enough, or their reason for asking isn’t strong enough. Or we will release all or part of your notes while following the UK GDPR and the Data protection Act 2018.
o If we agree to a police request we will tell you, unless letting you know would be likely to prejudice the law enforcement purposes.
o The notes are then reviewed by the police and the CPS and may be disclosed to the defence -if they meet the disclosure test. The disclosure test means material must be shared if it might undermine the prosecution’s case against the accused or help the case for the accused. This link to the Crown Prosecution Service website explains this in more detail.

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