Audio-Visual Recordings Policy for Assessment, Therapy, Supervision and Training purposes
1. Introduction
The audio and/or visual recording of assessment, therapy, supervision or training sessions (hereafter abbreviated to ‘sessions’) is a very useful and widespread practice, both for the provision of client care and training and development purposes. It is an essential aspect of psychological services, and something that must be conducted in a regulated and secure manner.
1.1 Purpose of Policy
This guidance is designed to ensure that the recording of sessions for clinical care, training or assessment is supported and conducted in a consistent and secure way. This policy includes recordings made during online or face-to-face sessions.
1.2 Definitions
‘Audio recording’ refers to the recording of audio footage from sessions via voice recorders, laptops, smart devices or any other type of audio recording equipment.
‘Video recording’ refers to the video recording of sessions via camcorders, webcams, smart devices or any other video recording equipment.
‘Still image’ refers to the recording of photos of sessions via digital cameras, laptops, smart devices or any other type of digital or analogue photographic equipment.
1.3 Scope of Policy
This guidance concerns the recording of clients, supervisees and colleagues regardless of the purpose, through audio, video or still image.
1.4 Principles
The recordings addressed in this guidance are highly sensitive in nature and a robust set of safeguards must be followed to ensure their safety and security. It is of vital importance that recordings should be treated with the same degree of security and sensitivity as a set of client casenotes.
2.0 Policy Statement
NeuroDiverse Online is committed to delivering the best possible client care and ensuring its practitioners and supervisors (thereafter abbreviated to ‘practitioners’) have all the knowledge and tools that they need to provide this. Alongside this NeuroDiverse Online recognises that a client or supervisee’s wishes and the confidentiality of their information is of paramount importance. This guidance sets out the duties and procedures that must be followed for client or supervisee data in audio and video formats.
3.0 Duties
This guidance applies and must be adhered to by all practitioners who use audio, video or photographic recording of clients and supervisees.
Recordings may be made for any of the following purposes:
- To enhance the assessment and treatment of the client
- For the client to listen to as part of their own use
- To share with another team member to inform a diagnostic assessment
- For the staff member to refer to themselves after the meeting to assist with diagnostic decisions
- To create a session summmary and transcript to help with report writing or to share with the client to read after the session
- To enhance the staff member’s own professional development and training
- To be used as part of a university–submitted assignment
- For the staff member to share in their confidential supervision sessions to enhance their own skills and the care of their client
- To contribute towards the training of other staff
- To be used as an exemplar of practice in the supervision of trainee therapists
- To be used in the delivery of workshops for trainee therapists
- To contribute towards audit or research
If deemed appropriate, and having obtained written consent from all parties, the NeuroDiverse Online (NDO) clinician will make a recording using their NDO Teams account. They will access their Teams account via a web browser or the app installed on their own computer. The NDO Microsoft 365 Teams policy settings prevent guests from recording sessions and therefore only staff members signed in to their NDO Teams account with their NDO email address will be able to make a recording. Clients will not be permitted to make recordings.
4.0 Procedure
4.1 Consent
Before any recordings can take place, it is essential that the subject(s) of the recording give their informed consent to be recorded. This may be the client, supervisee or any person present when the recording is made. This consent should be recorded using the attached consent form (s) (See Appendices 1-4). All assessment patients of NDO are asked to complete the consent form in appendix 1. Other consent forms are available to be used for therapy, supervision or training purposes (appendices 2-4).
Once given, consent is not permanent and can be withdrawn at any time. The clinician should ask the client or supervisee to re-affirm their consent verbally before each recorded session. The client or supervisee retains the right to pause or end the recording at any time during the session.
It is important that the client or supervisee’s consent to be recorded is an informed decision on their part. In advance of the proposed recording session, the clinician should carefully explain the process, including what will happen to the recordings, who will listen to/see them, and of course the purpose for taking the recording. The potential benefits of recording sessions can also be mentioned at this time.
The consent is administered electronically from within the client’s electronic file and a copy retained there (appendix 1). Consent to make recordings for supervision, training or research purposes will use a paper consent form (appendices 2-4) and will be scanned and uploaded to their file.
4.2 Recording devices
Recordings should only be made via the inbuilt recording facility in Microsoft Teams or the approved AI scribe via the staff members NDO account (see section 4.4). No other recording devices, videoconferencing accounts or AI scribes from other organisations should be used.
4.3 Storage of Recordings
All recordings are to be kept securely on the NDO Microsoft Teams and SharePoint site. Access to this is via the staff member’s own account, which is protected by a password and two-factor authentication.
4.4 Transfer of Recordings
There is often a need to share recordings with another party so that they can be utilised in assessment, therapy, supervision or training. With diagnostic assessments, it is often helpful if another member of the team is able to review the recording. NeuroDiverse Online uses the file sharing capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint which has encrypted file-sharing capabilities, allowing secure transfer of large files. When the recording has been made in Teams, the staff member locates the file within Teams or Stream application and ‘moves’ it to the client’s SharePoint folder. This does not require downloading of files to the staff member’s computer and is a safe way to transfer the recording to a place where the rest of the team are able to securely access it.
Recordings may be used to create session summaries for reports or client-focused summaries via the AI scribes Heidi or NovoNote. No other AI applications are permitted to be used with client recordings. Where a staff member wishes to use the transcribing facilities of an AI scribe, they must either use NDO’s team account or have their own account which is password protected and uses two-factor authentication. In this case only, is it permitted to download the recording to the clinician’s device. From there, it is then re-uploaded to the the AI scribe platform. The AI scribe then creates a transcript and session summary. The AI scribe does not keep recordings, and they are deleted automatically by the platform. However, the recording that was downloaded onto the staff member’s laptop must be manually deleted. Once the staff member has completed creating their session summary from the AI scribe, they must locate the downloaded recording on their laptop and immediately delete it. They should then empty their Trash can. Their device should have the NDO-approved cyber security program Sentinel 1 installed. The device must not be shared with anyone else, such as a friend or family member and should be password protected. The recording should never be stored on a memory stick, sent by any other file transfer method or emailed.
4.5 Retention & Disposal of Recordings
In all cases, the retention period of the recordings should be observed and reviewed. Usually, recordings stored on the NDO Teams account will have a retention period of three months (or until the assessment has been completed). The expiration date for the recording is set by the NDO’s Microsoft 365 Admin Centre organisational policy. Sometimes recordings are kept for longer, for example, to use in the delivery of a training workshop for other therapists, or to use in the supervision of other therapists as an exemplar of practice. If recordings are to be kept for this purpose, the therapist will clearly explain the type of training and audience they are expected to be used with. Explicit written consent for this purpose will be recorded on the consent form. Recordings should not be downloaded and kept on staff members’ own devices. This is only permissible on a temporary basis when transferring recordings to The AI scribe for transcribing (see paragraph 4.4 above).
Where consent was given for the recordings to be used in the training and supervision of other therapists, the client or supervisee’s continued consent will be assumed. If a client or supervisee has consented for the therapist to keep the recording indefinitely and later they change their mind, they can contact the therapist and the recording will be destroyed.
Once it is ascertained that the recording is no longer needed for the purposes for which consent was granted, it will be deleted.
4.6 Information governance incident logging
If in the event that the above safeguarding measures fail and a potential data breach has occurred, then the incident should be reported to the NDO Data Protection Officer Dr Jessie Gough who will log and investigate it. Depending on the circumstances, the staff member concerned or NDO may report the incident to the Information Commissioners Office if necessary. This is so a complete picture can be built up of what has happened and an assessment can be made of whether training has to be amended to improve knowledge in a certain area, or whether procedures should be changed.
5.0 Development, consultation and ratification
The policy and procedures have been developed following best practice from NHS Connecting for Health and the Strategic Health Authority, as well as the principles of the Data Protection Act and exemplar guidance from Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. A draft of this policy was shared and feedback gathered from psychologists and psychotherapists with experience of delivering therapy and supervision online in both the NHS and private practice.
6.0 Reference documents
- Confidentiality: NHS Code of Practice
- Audio Visual Recording Policy (Sussex Partnership)
- Information Security Management: NHS Code of Practice
- Data Protection Act 1998 and the EU General Data Protection Regulations (2018)
- Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) Guidance on Data Breach Management.
Last updated: November 2025