For Employees

With Arete, you are merely a phone call or click away from confidential and professional support—whenever and however you need it.

If you or your family member need support, you simply:

1. Call us at 1-877-412-7483 and provide your certificate (if applicable) and policy number. You can also request support through our online form.
2. Next, you’ll have a confidential conversation with a member of our intake team (or complete details on the online form) who will actively listen to your concerns and work with you to identify and match you to the professional from our extensive Canadian counsellor network best suited to meet your needs.
3. You will then contact the counsellor to book your first session and begin accessing support either in person, by phone or video. Bear in mind there are some things the counsellors in our network, are and aren’t able to provide. Here’s a list to help you be aware of the difference:
   • ✓ Goal-oriented, outcome focused, evidence-based support
   • ✓ General psychosocial counselling
   • ✓ General assessments for treatment planning purposes
   • ✓ Different types of counselling
   • ✗ Formal psychological assessments
   • ✗ Psychiatric support, including prescribing medications
   • ✗ Diagnoses or recommendations about legal, medical or work-related matters based on sessions
   • ✗ In-patient or residential substance abuse support
   • ✗ Write reports or letters for reasons not discussed in the initial request for counselling that may place Arete in a conflict of interest with an employer
   • ✗ Participate in labour relations, disability assessments or act as an expert witness in court
4. If you don’t feel a connection with the professional we’ve matched you with, please let us know! We’re here to help make your experience excellent and ensure you get the best possible outcome through counselling.

In cases where you or your family member hasn’t booked A) your first session within a month of reaching out to us or B) another session within 60 days of the last session, we’ll check-in. If your file is closed because either of these circumstances, don’t worry—it’s very easy to re-open when needed.

✓ = provided
✗ = not provided

If you have financial concerns or legal issues, our financial and legal professionals are just a phone call (1-877-412-7483) or click away from helping you better understand your next steps and other resources that may be available to you. However, it’s important to note that in both cases, the professionals in our network can only provide you with general information and guidance, and not complex legal or financial advice. If your issue is more involved, the professional may recommend consulting a financial advisor or hiring a lawyer privately.

When connecting with a legal professional in our network, here’s what we do/don’t provide:

• ✓ general guidance (i.e., legal information)
• ✓ support understanding legal forms
• ✓ support navigating legal jargon
• ✓ explanations of the law and legal system in general terms
• ✓ recommendations for next steps
• ✗ legal advice
• ✗ support reviewing legal documents
• ✗ applying the law and the legal system for a specific case
• ✗ interpretations of the law, including statute and case law and legal principles
• ✗ creating a lawyer-client relationship

When connecting with a financial professional in our network, here’s what we do/don’t provide:

• ✓ general guidance
• ✓ taxation support
• ✓ budget support
• ✗ specific financial advice
• ✗ investment advice

✓ = provided
✗ = not provided

Within our Professional Network, you have access to over 70 different types of counselling methodologies. As our approach is goal-oriented, outcome-focused and evidence-based, our clients have had successful outcomes using the following most common therapeutic approaches:

• Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
• Couples therapy
• Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT)
• Family therapy (including supporting children)
• Internal Family Systems Model (i.e., parts work)
• Mindfulness-based therapies
• Narrative therapy
• Person-centered therapy
• Trauma-informed therapies (e.g., acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR))
• Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT)
• Somatic therapies

Additionally, when our intake team matches you with a counsellor, they take into account both the counsellor’s therapeutic approaches and your needs. This said, you always have the option to request a specific type of counselling, if that’s your preference. If your preferred therapeutic approach isn’t practiced by a professional in our network, we’ll do our best to recruit a counsellor to meet your needs.

Our counselling services are goal-oriented so throughout this process you and your counsellor will work together to incorporate techniques that will help create the changes you want to see in your life. While no formal preparation is required prior to your first counselling session, taking a moment to consider the following questions may help—especially if this is your first time in counselling. Whether you simply think about the answers or write them down to bring to your session, this exercise can help you center your thoughts and feel more comfortable expressing your needs with your counsellor.

• How would you describe the issue you’re facing?
• What changes have occurred since you decided to book a counselling session?
• Have you already tried to resolve this issue? If yes, what have you tried?
• If counselling is successful, how will your life change?

Given that research has shown us that client’s experience the most progress at the beginning of the counselling process, a little preparation before your first session can go a long way. However, if you’d rather just dive in when the time comes, that’s fine too! Much like the session(s) you’re about to experience, our approach is flexible and made to adapt to you and your needs.

Once your employer has made the referral, you’d simply:

1. Call us at 1-877-412-7483 and provide your certificate and policy (or customer) number (note that you may also be asked for your referring manager’s name). You can also request support through our online form.
2. Next you’ll have a confidential conversation with a member of our intake team (or complete details on the online form) who will actively listen to your concerns and work with you to identify and match you to the professional from our extensive Canadian counsellor network best suited to meet your needs.
3. The professional will then connect with you and you’ll work together to address your issue.
4. While in person sessions often yield the best results, note that you can also access telehealth support through phone or video.
5. Note that while your employer has made the referral for support in this case, they receive no information pertaining to your counselling sessions.

As with counselling, you are just a phone call or click away from accessing these other confidential and professional supports—whenever and however you need them.

If you or your family member are looking to access support other than counselling, you simply:

1. Call us at 1-877-412-7483 and provide your certificate and policy number. You can also request support through our online form.
2. Next you’ll have a confidential conversation with a member of our intake team (or complete details on the online form) who will actively listen to your concerns and work with you to identify and match you to the professional from our extensive Canadian counsellor network best suited to meet your needs.
3. The professional will then connect with you and you’ll work together to address your issue.

Respect for your privacy starts as soon as you contact us. All Arete employees are bound by a confidentiality agreement and any personal information about you is collected in accordance with privacy legislation.

After your signed consent form is returned, subsequent communications never include your full name or other identifying information. Instead, a confidential client coding system is used to protect your privacy. Details on the nature and content of your counselling sessions cannot be shared with anyone without your written consent, and your counsellor is further governed by their professional association’s code of conduct and ethics requirements, which are in place to protect your privacy. There are only two circumstances where we may be required by law to report information you share:

1. there’s a risk to yourself or someone else (this includes children)
2. your file is subpoenaed by a court of law

While your employer may be provided with high-level, aggregate program usage reports on occasion, these reports never include any identifying information. In fact, if there is any risk of exposure at all, we simply don’t issue them because your privacy comes first.

Intake

If your child is a covered dependant and either an adult (i.e. over 18 years of age) or considered a ‘mature minor’ through an assessment by an Arete clinical coordinator, they can complete the Arete intake process themselves by either calling 1-877-412-7483 or completing the online form. Their access is independent and confidential from their parent/legal guardian. If your child is a minor under 18 and/or cannot provide consent, you’ll complete the intake process for them and will be the main contact for us at Arete.

Counselling

Professionals in our Network are bound to confidentiality by law under their professional code of ethics. So, unless a child discloses safety concerns that pose immediate danger or risk of harm to either themselves or others (which requires the counsellor to involve the necessary parties to mitigate), your child’s counselling is always kept confidential. Usually, counsellors will have a conversation around confidentiality with you and the child as you start your sessions. This approach applies to us at Arete as well—unless there’s an expressed risk of danger or harm, your child’s reason for accessing Arete’s counselling services will remain private between themselves, Arete clinical coordinators and their counsellor.

If your child is young, you’ll likely have a conversation with the counsellor at the outset about what can be shared and when and how you as the parent/legal guardian might be involved as a support person. If your child is a ‘mature minor’—as assessed by a health care provider as being capable to give consent to make their own health care decisions—or a teenager, their counselling sessions are generally conducted more independent of their parents/legal guardians. Adult children’s counselling sessions are generally conducted as completely independent but can vary. For example, if your adult child wants to have a parent/legal guardian involved, Arete is happy to accommodate.

Don’t have time to search for a daycare for your toddler? Have specific childcare needs for your little one and don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered. When you access our childcare navigation support by calling 1-877-412-7483 or completing the online form, one of Arete’s Clinical Coordinators will assess your requirements, research options on your behalf and provide you with a detailed summary within three to five business days. The summary is yours and you can take it from there!

Example:

Sarah needs either a licenced day home or daycare facility for her 12-month-old child with the following criteria:

• located downtown Toronto, preferably near the Financial District
• must provide snacks, meals and field trips
• be within a budget of $1,100 per month
• cloth diapering services and vegetarian meals are preferred but not required

Sarah contacts Arete and has a chat with one of our intake staff about her needs and criteria for childcare. The intake staff begin an exhaustive search and, within three to five days, emails the parent a summary report with recommend childcare facilities that meet their criteria (or closely meet). Sarah, after doing her own research on the options in the summary, then reaches out to the facilities she’s interested in.