What is Confidential Advocacy?
CONFIDENTIALITY
At Abby’s House, we have confidential and privileged advocates who can help you with options, resources, and support after an incident of interpersonal violence and gender discrimination.
In the state of Oregon, advocates must complete a 40 hour training that gives us the ability to be both confidential and privileged. Which means that we have similar confidentiality to a lawyer.
We can give you all of your options and support without having to report the incident to the university or law enforcement.
If you were to share what happened to a non-confidential employee (everyone on campus except Abby’s House and SHCC staff), they would be required to share the information with the university.
We are able to meet with you one time to help with immediate needs, or if you’d like more support, we can schedule ongoing meetings to check in and support you with ongoing needs.
LIMITATIONS OF CONFIDENTIALITY
The limitations we have around confidentiality are:
- If you say you want to hurt yourself or someone else
- If we become aware of abuse of minors, elders, or vulnerable adults
- If there is a court order or a subpoena
- If you give us permission to speak to someone else about your situation
If any of these come up in our conversation, you will be informed of how we need to report and document the information, and you will be part of the conversation as much as we are able to include you. We don’t want anyone to feel uninformed or out of the loop when it comes to these situations.
