Informed Consent: 1-2-1 Psychology Support for Exercise and Athlete Career Transition

Informed Consent relates to your right to choose whether to take part in our 1-2-1 Psychology Support for Exercise or Athlete Career Transition/Retirement.

The following sections give information of our support to help you make this choice with your own free-will, without undue influence.

It is important that you play an active role in giving and ensuring consent. If you have any doubt, please ask us your question. You can do this by asking your Consultant or by contacting Us (L&M Consulting Ltd) via our Get in Touch form.

• 1. Purpose of support

  Our support uses up-to-date research and psychological techniques to help You …

  Exercise: Getting Started, Keeping Going

  • Identify a clear aim and motives for achieving that aim.
  • To identify any potential barriers.
  • To explore your personal strengths and experience, and potential strategies that can help you overcome any barriers.
  • To set realistic targets and to gain the support to achieve.

  Athlete Career Transition & Retirement

  • Coming to terms with change and endings, whether they’re what you had hoped for or not.
  • Identify the important beliefs and values that will; help you see new opportunities, guide good decisions, and enable you to develop an effective and inspiring future strategy.
  • Identify, transfer and develop useful life and coping skills.
  • Protect and promote your psychological wellbeing.
• 2. Our clients: Who we support

  Our support is for those aged 18+ (or 16+ with primary care-giver consent):

  • Who are based in, and will access the service from, the UK.
  • Without any mental health concern* for which someone would normally seek support from a GP or Qualified Mental Health Professional, who are not awaiting or currently receiving therapy for mental health, and are not considered a vulnerable adult/young person.
  • Who are ready to think about what they want to achieve and to make changes to help.
  • Who are able to speak and understand fluent English.

  If at any point of Our support process, Your circumstances change so that You do not meet any of the above criteria, please inform your Consultant as soon as you can and before Your next support session.

  *Please see here for examples of mental health concerns and what to do if you have these concerns.

• 3. What our support is not

  Our support is not:

  • Clinical in nature, i.e., it is not designed to diagnose or help You with any mental health concern for which people would normally seek support from their General Practitioner or a Qualified Mental Health Professional.
  • To provide physical training advice.
  • To provide psychological assessment for any third party, including for court proceedings or compensation claims.
• 4. What our support involves

  Our support is grounded in research and good-practice.

  Support is through one-to-one discussion with Your Consultant to help You; reflect upon and better understand, your aims and motives, and how to move forward with confidence. It might also include brief questionnaires to measure Your experience.

  All sessions have a structure, but We focus on what is important to You and what best suits Your needs and preferences: The exact nature of any on-going support evolves over time.

  We use techniques based on three different psychological approaches/areas:

  • Cognitive Behaviour Approaches: Unhelpful beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviours and emotions can all hamper progress. We use techniques to reduce these and to help You find and use positive alternatives that enable you to progress with confidence.
  • Wellbeing and Positive Psychology: Based on the above, these techniques help You; protect or improve Your psychological wellbeing, promote social support, and improve life control and fulfilment.
  • Health and Behaviour Change Psychology: These techniques help You to understand, commit to, and make helpful changes in a timely manner.
• 5. The support process

  All support sessions are one-hour. The first session will give You time to describe Your situation, where you are, what you want to achieve and why it’s important. Our aim is better understand you, your strengths and opportunities, and any particular challenges that you may face. A post-session report summarises these, and includes potential areas that we can explore and help you with in future sessions.

  Thereafter, You can choose to:

  • Use the recommendations yourself to improve Your approach.
  • Book further follow-up consultations to continue to make progress within the area(s) identified within the report. Once you have completed at least one session, we can also discuss other helpful ways of supporting you, e.g., email support/weekly ‘check-ins.’

  It is important that You understand Your support. If at any point you have a question, please ask Your Consultant, or contact Us via Our Get in Touch form.

• 6. Who provides our support

  Support is provided by Caroline Marlow.

  Caroline has a PhD in behaviour change and is a British Psychological Society (BPS) Practitioner Psychologist (Sport & Exercise Psychology) with HCPC practitioner registration. Her career as a sport and exercise psychology lecturer, consultant and researcher spans 25 years, throughout which she has listened to, learned from, and supported people of all activity/sporting levels. She is bound by the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (please see the BPS website for more info).

• 7. Foreseeable risks

  Change can lead to difficulties and emotional experiences that can vary day-by-day and over time. Discussing Your experience and situation with Us, working towards change, noticing the benefits, or realising the need for further life change and acceptance, can be difficult and make You feel emotional. These emotions may be negative or positive and will change over time.

  Our support will evolve over time with Your requirements. However, We aim to improve Your experience and therefore the risk of taking part in Our support is considered low in comparison to Your not gaining psychological support. Please note that this estimation of risk is based on:

  • Your honest and accurate provision of information.
  • You seeking mental health or emergency support from a Qualified Health Professional as people normally would when they have mental or physical health concerns.
  • You following any recommendation that We give You to gain support or advice from a Qualified Health Professional or emergency support.

  Where Our support benefits from the advice of, and collaboration with, other qualified health professionals, We will:

  • Encourage You to discuss Your specific situation and agree on a suitable course of action with them.
  • Discuss their input with You in relation to the use of psychological techniques.
  • Follow Your informed decision based on their guidance.

  Our support therefore poses no further risk over and above that identified by the Qualified Health Professional.

  You acknowledge that:

  • We recommend support options that We believe are likely (based upon Our experience and training) to be effective, but We cannot guarantee results.
  • Online Only: No online service is a perfect substitute for an “in person” consultation with a Psychologist.
• 8. Your confidentiality

  Anything You share with Your Consultant or Us is regarded as confidential, whether it is business or personal information. We undertake not to, at any time, directly or indirectly, use or disclose any information You share with Us during Your sessions.

  Confidentiality will only be broken in situations where:

  • We are required to do so by law.
  • The Consultant has serious and immediate concerns in relation to You being of risk to self, to Us, or to others.

  Also, where*:

  1. You give Us permission to work with other Qualified Health Professionals or someone important to Your progression, e.g., Your manager or coach. What we can disclose to this third party will be discussed and agreed in advance by yourself and Us.
  2. The person receiving Our support is under 18 years old. Here, we will hold an initial ‘Can We Help You’ chat with the young person and the primary care-giver (PCG) to discuss the PCG’s role and to ensure that the PCG understands and accepts the importance of confidentiality. Thereafter, we will only give the PCG what they ‘have the right to know and need to know’, i.e., what they can reasonably require for their purpose of giving care. Typically, this information will be discussed with the young person before it is shared so that they can ask questions and provide written consent.
  3. Someone else has commissioned or paid for Your support. Here, You must tell Us this before We start supporting You. This enables Us to ensure that You and the commissioner understand and agree what information can be given. We will only give the commissioner what they ‘have the right to know and need to know’, i.e., what they can reasonably require for their purpose (e.g., of employment). Typically, this information is given in shortened form, and We will show You it before it is shared so that You can ask questions and provide written consent.
  4. Referral to a Qualified Mental Health Professional be necessary. Here, the process will be fully explained and personal information only given following Us gaining Your fully informed written consent.

  *You can at any point withdraw consent for information to be provided to any third party as outlined in 1-4 above. If you wish to do so, please tell Your Consultant in writing, or contact Us via Our Get in Touch form.

• 9. Data protection, appointment communications, and recording consultations

  Acuity Scheduling

  Our booking system, Acuity Scheduling, will send you email and SMS appointment confirmations and reminders. You can withdraw your Consent to receive these reminders (but not the confirmations) by informing Your Consultant or contacting Us via Our Get in Touch form.

  During Online consultations:

  • Your Consultant will take written notes, and may also audio-visual record sessions using the online platform (e.g., Zoom) recording facilities.
  • All recordings and notes are used solely to enhance the support provided, i.e.; to ensure Your Consultant can focus on You effectively, to allow fuller Consultant reflection, and for Consultant supervision. Your Consultant will respect any request that You make to temporarily stop audio- or audio-visual recording within your consultation, although You must then accept the limitations on Our service. You will be given a post-session report that summarises recorded information. All of this information will be kept by Us in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 2018. Please see Our Privacy Policy for more details of how we keep and store Your information.
  • We ask that You do not audio or audio-visual record any session without asking for Your Consultant’s consent. Your Consultant has the right to say no to Your request, in which case We ask that You don’t record it.
  • If, with Your Consultant’s consent, You do record a consultation, You agree to take full responsibility for the security of that recording, including but not limited to keeping it secure from unauthorised access and distribution. You further agree that You will not hold Us, or any anyone acting on Our behalf who provide services, liable should the video be lost, or accessed by anyone other than yourself.
• 10. Your Right to Withdraw

  You have the right to withdraw consent and from Our support at any stage without penalty. Please see Our cancellation policy and refund policy within Our
  Terms and Conditions of Purchase. If you wish to do so, please contact Us via Our Get in Touch form.

  We will review consent with You:

  • Where there are substantive changes in Our support (e.g., a change in Consultant or to collaborative support with another Qualified Health Professional).
  • If We have reason to consider that You may no longer consent.
• 11. I have concerns about my support: What to do

  If You have any concerns regarding Our support that You feel unable to discuss with Your Consultant, please contact Mr Paul Logan, Director, L&M Consulting Ltd, on email: paul@landmconsulting.co.uk

Do you still have a question?