Confidentiality Considerations When Providing Sexual Assault Advocacy Services to Minors

Confidentiality is the cornerstone of advocacy. While the basic principles of maintaining respect and privacy apply to survivors of all ages, consent and confidentiality issues become especially important and a bit more complex when the survivor is under the age of 18. By providing some clarity around these complexities, our hope is to ultimately increase minors' access to and utilization of advocacy services. Some of the issues that must be considered when working with minors are:

• Age of consent for services
• Agency policies and procedures with regard to minors
• Release of the minor's record and advocacy information
• Confidentiality with teens
• Confidentiality with children
• Mandated reporting
• Sexual Assault Protection Orders

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