BCACC Standards of Clinical Practice Initiative

Bill 36 – 2022: Health Professions and Occupations Act received Royal Assent in November 2022. Though no enforce date has been set, the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (the Association or BCACC) is actively preparing for the changes required by, and embedded in, the Act. This includes preparing for transition to a regulated profession.

As part of this preparation, BCACC contracted Pivotal Research Inc., an independent Canadian research firm, to complete a review and rewrite of existing Standards of Practice, incorporating requirements of the upcoming Act, best practice from a national jurisdictional scan of other regulated counselling, psychotherapy and health professions, and information from the Association’s existing Code of Ethical Conduct and Guidelines. The result is a draft, consolidated document containing 12 streamlined Standards of Clinical Practice.

The Association does not currently have an in-effect date for the draft Standards of Clinical Practice. Following analysis of survey respondent feedback and accompanying updates to the draft Standards by Pivotal Research, BCACC will undertake additional due diligence including, but not limited to: Committee, Board and other internal, external and governance review and ascent; legal review; and implementation planning, including guidance for members and legacy approaches where required.

Feedback Survey

Feedback on these 12 Standards of Clinical Practice through a confidential online survey has been requested of all BCACC members. This survey, and the incentivization prize draw associated with it, are being undertaken by Pivotal Research under contract to BCACC. Each member of the Association will receive an email invitation directly from Pivotal Research to solicit their participation.

The survey will be open from March 9 to April 6, 2023 at 11:59 pm PST. The survey is provided through a secure, encrypted service hosted in Canada.

Each participant has the option to provide feedback on only a few, some, or all 12 of the Standards of Clinical Practice. BCACC has provided several items for prize draws for those who provide feedback to at least 4 Standards. Additional prize draws are open to those who complete feedback on 8, and all 12, Standards. Participants will provide express consent to be entered into the draws and will be asked to provide contact information at that time. Pivotal Research will ensure that contact information is not connected to the feedback provided within the survey.

Pivotal Research will analyze the feedback collected through the survey and BCACC will receive reporting with recommendations for changes to the Standards of Clinical Practice based on aggregated data only and comment excerpts scrubbed of identifying features. BCACC will not have access to individual responses, nor will the Association be provided information about individual participation beyond completion statistics.

 

Privacy & Confidentiality of Personal Information

Subsequent to appropriate privacy and confidentiality assessments and agreements, BCACC shared limited contact details of members with Pivotal Research via secure means. While in the possession of Pivotal Research, contact information will be securely stored and will not be associated to individual responses. Personal contact details provided for the purpose of the draw will not be stored with final responses, nor shared with BCACC. Pivotal Research will limit access to contact details to select staff only and will not use contact information for any other purposes except to invite you to participate on behalf of BCACC and to enter your name in a draw, should you indicate consent to do so. Pivotal Research will securely dispose of, and attest to the secure destruction of, all contact information once the survey closes. Confirmation and attestation will be provided to BCACC.

 

Survey Participation

Consent for participation in the survey is implied by answering survey questions. Individual responses to the survey will be  kept confidential to Pivotal Research.

Participation is voluntary; those who access the survey will be:

      1. Asked demographic questions that will help determine representation of membership and diversity in perspectives gathered. This information may also be used by BCACC to inform Standards education and implementation planning.
      2. Asked multiple choice questions and to provide text feedback about Standards of Clinical Practice that are new or contain significant differences from previous Standards.
      3. Provided the option to provide feedback on subsequent sets of Standards. You will periodically be asked if you wish to continue providing feedback before additional Standards are presented to you, until you have completed feedback for all 12 Standards.

 

Participants have the option to rescind participation and any submitted responses until midnight the day before the survey closing date (above).

To have responses removed from the survey data in advance of closing, please contact Pivotal Research by forwarding your invitation email to feedback@pivotalresearch.ca indicating your request to have your responses and participation removed from the survey data. We will complete and confirm your request. Once the survey is closed, no method of identifying responses will exist.

Partially completed surveys are recorded by our system and will be used in survey data analysis if they are substantive. Each advance to the next screen of the survey records responses in a database to facilitate the ability to pick up where previous responses ended, in the event a respondent chooses to stop and intends to complete a submission later.

Respondents have the option to modify previous responses at any time prior to completing submission, including after stepping away for a period of time or closing the survey without submitting it, by using the navigation buttons at the bottom of the survey page. Responses can only be modified until you have completed the survey.

All obviously identifying information within open-ended responses will be removed and no contact information will be stored with individual responses.

 

Survey Security

The survey is provided on a secure, encrypted platform that is hosted in Canada by a reputable service provider who undertakes regular third-party security audits. Pivotal Research complies with all applicable privacy and data security legislation and limits access to contact information and raw data. Pivotal Research will not use personal contact information for any other purpose and will ensure its secure disposal upon close of the survey.

For assistance to complete the survey or any questions or concerns about how the information will be reported, please contact Pivotal Research at feedback@pivotalresearch.ca.

For questions about this initiative, the development of the Standards or the ongoing planning for their adoption, please contact the BCACC.

 

Participate for the Chance to Win

To incentivize the review of a greater number of Standards, survey respondents receive a random selection of 4 out of 12 Standards for feedback. If the respondents elects, they will be provided additional, subsequent selections of Standards to provide feedback on. For each selection of 4 standards a respondent completes, an option to enter into a draw will be provided as below:

Complete 4 Standards – Draw 1: Win 1 of 5 Amazon Gift Cards (worth $200 each)

Complete 8 Standards – Draw 2: Win 1 of 3 Membership Dues Tokens (worth $436 each, transferable)

Complete 12 Standards – Draw 3: Win a BCACC Conference Prize Package (includes 1 Conference registration and 2 nights at the Conference Hotel, approximate value $1000, transferable)

Each set of completed Standards is one draw entry, completing review of all 12 Standards enters the respondent into all three (3) draws. For entry purposes, Pivotal Research will request a mode of contact be supplied. You can choose not to be entered into the draw and to therefore not supply contact information. Any contact information supplied will not be stored with final response data and will only be used to contact winning entries.

Entries for each draw will be entered into a random computer-aided draw to be completed on April 7, 2023. Once all winning entries have been notified and confirmed consent to share their information back to BCACC has been obtained, all contact information will be securely destroyed.

Winners will be contacted by BCACC to arrange for redemption/delivery of prizes.