PROTECT YOUR FAMILY - Important Advice on Your Privacy

Most Americans are fairly lax about the enforcement of the HIPAA privacy regulations. Oh, we know it's there because we get the privacy statements every time we turn around, but we rarely give a second thought to exactly WHAT they mean. But let me explain just a bit about what they could mean.

Let's assume, for the sake of this article, that you are a parent with a troubled teenaged daughter who has mental health issues. With a troubled teen daughter, one often faces other serious issues suffered by your child, including substance (drug or alcohol) abuse, promiscuity, theft, rage, anger, and runaway/delinquent behaviors. And let's assume that you have dealt with the child's extreme behaviors until you are desperate for help, absolutely ready to pull your hair out for some assistance in dealing with these issues. You fear for your child's safety, worry about her future, and have concerns for your own sanity due to the financial and emotional stress you are facing. You have sought help from non-profit agencies, governmental agencies, counseling centers, churches, school counselors, the juvenile justice system and friends, and nothing has made a difference in your daughter's behavior. You feel you are reaching the end of the rope. In an effort to assimilate a "team" to address your daughter's problems, you have signed a release, giving her therapist and school counselor permission to discuss your daughter's case as they feel appropriate. BIG MISTAKE.

In family counseling, you admit to your daughter's therapist that you have discovered illicit drugs in her bedroom.

At the time you reveal these concerns, you're thinking that you're in the privacy of a counselor's or therapist's office and that nothing you say will leave the room. WRONG! Here's what CAN happen:

- Your daughter's therapist takes it upon herself to contact the school counselor, who, also having been given permission to discuss your child, reveals something she was told in private: the child is pregnant.

- The therapist assumes that the girl is pregnant and is abusing drugs; she then feels an obligation to report the child to Protective Services because of endangerment to the fetus.

- The two counselors chat, get quite comfortable and chummy with each other, and decide she is too angry to be in your home, that she may run away again if she remains under your care, may take more drugs and further endanger an unborn baby. So they each agree that their next course of business is to contact Children's Protective Services, both for the protection of your teen daughter AND the protection of the unborn fetus she carries (which you know nothing about at this point).

- Your attempts to control the daughter's behavior include appropriate punishment: denial of participation in extra-curricular activity and athletics and curtailing of her social activities, all of which cause your daughter to be ENRAGED. In fact, your daughter has decided (and confided to her therapist) that she would be much better off living with an uncle out of state (who doesn't want her and hasn't called her in two years). He is, however, a wealthy man, and your daughter has decided she is kin to his wallet, so she'd have a much better life with him.

Your next meeting with the child's therapist results in your being absolutely blind-sided. The State Protective Services has been contacted, and, without your knowledge whatsoever, the case worker, the therapist and the school counselor have met together (without you present) and decided to railroad you into sending the child to her uncle's. You arrive to speak with the therapist, and are informed that Protective Services will be attending the meeting. And in that meeting, you are informed that you WILL send her to the uncle's to live.

"Wait a minute," you exclaim, "this isn't addressing the behaviors that brought her here!" But what you don't know is that it doesn't matter. You gave permission for everyone involved to talk with others about YOUR FAMILY'S PROBLEMS. Do they have to reveal these conversations to you? Nope. Do you have to be included? Nope. Does Protective Services have to ask you anything at all? Not in Tennessee, they don't.

You are given two choices: send the child where you don't want her to go (the uncle's in this case), or Protective Services will place her into foster care and you will have no say whatsoever in the matter.

There is not even a suspicion that your daughter has been neglected or abused; there has been no finding that you have done anything wrong. Nonetheless, YOU ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHERE YOUR CHILD WILL LIVE.

What did you do wrong? You waived your right to privacy, granting people who consider themselves experts at deciding what is best for YOUR child permission to talk with others about YOUR DAUGHTER's problems.

Now, let me make sure you realize something: these counselors and state employees can be 25 or 26 years old; they don't have to be parents, they don't have to have years and years of experience, and they don't have to inform you of their plans. They haven't loved and reared the child; they may have no clue about the real history behind the child's behaviors; they may not even BELIEVE that she has the behaviors, in fact. If she is a good student and quite bright, she can convince them that YOU are the problem. But none of that matters. They CAN railroad you into sending your child away. They CAN deny you the right to choose where your child lives.

Believe this story. Just last Friday, it happened to my husband and me. Tennessee Protective Services and the Oasis Center of Nashville used the permission they had to talk about the child to overstep the authority they should have had. It's a lesson hard learned.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR: NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, GIVE A UNILATERAL WAIVER OF YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS. If your child's therapist needs to speak with anyone, make them talk with you; if a school counselor needs to speak with someone about your child, make them go through you. YOU coordinate the child's care in every way. The alternative can be outrageous and unbelievable. Trust me on this.