6.8 Safety and Security of Remote and Tele-Health Services

When Berkeley Social Welfare MSW students are permitted or requested to provide remote social work or telehealth services - or field placement agencies are asked to allow students to serve remotely, when possible - the ability to do so will normally depend upon the nature of social work services provided, the population served and service context.

When a student will be providing clinical social work services to vulnerable clients or constituents remotely, the following must generally be true:

  • It is the responsibility of the agency to ensure students are well-oriented to and follow the relevant state and national guidelines to protect confidentiality of client and agency information and to obtain informed consent.
  • The agency ensures that the technology and process of telehealth and distance counseling are in compliance with state and national guidelines for the protection of client and agency confidentiality
  • The agency must issue the student an approved device with all of the appropriate programs, software, applications, and encryption installed, or will make certain the appropriate programs, software, applications, virtual private network (VPN), or encryption are installed on the student's devices.
  • The student must complete mandatory tele-health learning modules that will be provided by the field program regarding law and ethics, and best practices.
  • The field instructor will explicitly discuss consultation expectations and protocols, and crisis response protocols for students who are remotely engaged in client-facing services.
  • The field instructor, training coordinator, or another appropriate employee of the agency must be immediately available to the student providing tele-health services for urgent consultation regarding clinical risk or crisis response protocols for when students are remotely engaged in client-facing services.
  • The student must take reasonable steps to ensure client or patient privacy when they are engaged in service provision, such as using earphones and arranging for as private a space as possible.