Terms And Conditions

Following terms and conditions are for Nova ecounselling service only:

Please read the following terms and conditions before submitting your question.

The Nova-eCounselling service is designed to provide you, students at Nova Institute, with support and advice about issues that may be affecting your study or private wellbeing, via an online question and answer system. Posting a message to the Nova-eCounselling service will allow you to ask questions, which, forever reason, you may not feel comfortable asking someone face-to-face.

Nova-eCounselling is not intended to replace therapeutic face-to-face counselling of an ongoing nature. Its purpose is instead to help you with day-to-day concerns you may be experiencing, and/or to establish whether you may benefit from seeing a counsellor or another health professional to help overcome your difficulties. For ongoing or more serious issues, face-to-face counselling or psychotherapy is advised.

The intention of this service is to enhance the services already offered by the Institute. Nova-eCounselling is an initiative already being provided by a number of Institutes. It has proven to be an effective means of delivering psychological advice and education.

It is important to recognise that there can be limitations to online counselling. In many situations face-to-face counselling is safer and may be more effective in addressing emotional and psychological issues. Some limitations associated with online counselling include: misunderstandings, which can arise due to a lack of non-verbal cues (such as facial expressions and emotional reactions); email messages may not be received, or can be delayed; and we cannot ensure the privacy of emails at your end. Confidentiality is also limited by the security of the technology being used, and while all effort is taken to ensure this is minimised it may not be guaranteed.

The online Nova-eCounselling question form has been designed with privacy and confidentiality in mind. Once the form is submitted, all information within the form (including your email address) will be emailed to a Nova-eCounsellor. Only those with the authority to answer the questions are permitted to access these emails and read your question.

Nova-eCounselling questions are sent via a secure email form to a Nova-eCounsellor. In order to receive an answer to your submitted question, a valid email address must be provided. While this means your email address will be viewable by the Nova-eCounsellor answering your question, this typically only identifies your student number and not your name. Nova-eCounsellor will not attempt to match your student number to your name, except in the rare instance that he/she has a strong suspicion that you are at risk of causing serious harm to yourself or someone else.

Due to illegal hacking and the potential for technological mishaps, the risk of unintended disclosure of student-counsellor correspondence may be greater for an online counselling service than in face-to-face situations. Any communication on the internet has the potential to be intercepted, however steps have been taken to minimise this risk at our end. While all care is taken to ensure emails coming into the Nova-eCounselling service are accessed only by authorised staff and all records are kept secure, students submitting a question, and therefore receiving a response, are responsible for the confidentiality and security of those emails at their end. It is therefore recommended that you ensure you have up-to-date virus protection and anti-spyware software on your computer when using the Nova-eCounselling service.

Under specific circumstances, information may be disclosed to a third party in order to avert risk. Legal compliance requires that if the responding counsellor is concerned about the safety of a student, or others, then confidentiality may be broken. In such situations, only minimal information necessary to avert risk will be disclosed, and attempts will be made to first discuss this with the student. In addition, records may be subpoenaed for court in exceptional circumstances. Under no other circumstances will the confidentiality of students' personal records be broken. Students are also able to request to view the personal information in these records.