Confidentiality

The Free Condoms service operates within the existing confidentiality guidelines of the participating organisations. However, participating professionals must respect the right of young people to confidentiality when discussing contraception and when distributing condoms.  This means that professionals will not pass any information on to other professionals or enquiring persons except to protect the young person or someone else from serious harm. Confidentiality, for example, will be broken where a young person discloses child protection concerns or may be in need of medical assistance. In this case the professional is expected to discuss this with the young person in question first. Professionals are encouraged to use the following or equivalent phrase when young people access condoms through the scheme:

"We will not pass information about you to anyone else. The only time we might have to pass on information would be to protect you or someone else from serious harm. In such a case, we would try to discuss this with you first".