Ethics is an essential part of FLH work.  The main guiding principles are overall ethical issues, as described in “Qualitative Research in Clinical and Health Psychology” (Rohleder & Lyons, 2014).

The ethical principles applied on the client’s part:

1. Clients should participate only after fully understanding and agreeing to the terms, ensuring that the project aligns with their needs and circumstances.
2. Clients must provide complete and truthful information in the personal details’ questionnaire during registration.
3. Clients should avoid providing information that could negatively affect their mental or emotional well-being.
4. Signing the service agreement and paying the fee constitute full consent to receive the consulting services.
5. In online services, clients must adhere to the rules in the agreement. They may use the web consultation platform freely but are entitled to up to six hours of advice.”
6. Failure to reveal the whole facts regarding the client’s situation, and the goals of the counselling, exempts the counsellor from any responsibility for the nature and quality of the counselling.
7. The client is fully responsible for agreeing and deciding to adopt the consultation guidance they received as well as for implementing the conclusions of the counselling. The counselling is a recommendation.

8. A participant can withdraw from the participation at any time, no explanation is needed. The fees will be charged till the end of the month.
9. Disqualification of participants due to a mental state, will be at the discretion of the professional staff accompanied. The decision will be explained, and alternative help will be offered.
10.   Act in good faith and with full sincerity. Hiding facts or crucial events from the consultant will harm the quality of the service and remove any commitment and professional liability for the consulting services.
11.   A client who tries to defraud, break into the system or the servers, or establish contact with other clients or with the consultants privately, will be terminated from participation in the project without warnings or explanations. Their money will not be returned to them.
12.   To inform the counsellor of any special needs or distress.
13.   Clients may ask and check any information relating to the project till satisfaction.

1.   The clients can approach the project managers through the Web platform at any time.
2. If during the sessions a participant reports or manifests emotional difficulties, they will be suspended from the counselling and will be under the care of the support team until they find professional treatment.

16.   If a participant is involved in therapy, they will inform and consult with the therapist about being an appropriate participant for this project. There is no need for written consent (Sperling, 2016).
17.   In a situation where there are possible conflicts of interest between the client and another service supplier, from the project team, the client should report them and may act to best of their interests. 
18.   Participants shall be entitled to review their written professional files on the web at any time. (Aharon, 2009).
19.   To prevent misuse of the project, no reports will be given at this stage, to the legal authorities in the country such as the courts, welfare services, police, education and/or health systems. The system will only be able to provide participation certificates.
20.   No monetary compensation or any other reward will be offered to the candidate for participation in the pilot.

The ethical principles applied on the project part:

The project team commits to the following ethical standards:

1.       We commit to professional standards that must be matched to the highest standards of research, counselling practice, and public service.
2.       We rely on knowledge, science, research and professional practices and act sincerely and honestly.
3.       We will act following professional qualifications; offer knowledge research and be aware of up-to-date research and professional information in the fields of activity.
4.       We shall not discriminate against clients based on race, ethnicity/nationality, culture, origin national, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, language, disability, health status and socioeconomic status.
5.       We will protect the anonymity of the clients and the potential candidates in all stages of the project.
6.       We will maintain absolute and permanent confidentiality of the contents of the sessions. However, a general statistics summary without mentioning the client’s name will conduct and will not affect the issue of preserving personal information (Sperling, 2016).
7.       We will not involve any third party in counselling, due to the sensitivity of the information being discussed.
8.       We are committed to transparency and objectivity in the collection, analysis and interpretation of facts and findings and verification of conceptualization.
9.       Questions should not be posed, or tasks may not be assigned to clients that may impair their mental well-being or physically abuse or affect them in a psychological or another improper manner. (American Educational Research Association. 2011. Code of Ethics; American Psychological Association. 2010. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct; British Educational Research Association. (2011). Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research).
10.   The questions or tasks in the research should match the client’s emotional and cognitive abilities.
11.   We commit to maximum availability during the service period towards the clients. However, consultation outside the boundaries of the sessions should not occur.
12.   Counselling does not replace mental and behavioural First Aid measures. However, we will detect code words that may indicate distress. In such cases, a member of the support team will respond to the client according to the provisions of the law and according to the reasonableness of providing online remote counselling. In repeated cases of complaints or concerns about harming oneself or others, the client will be disqualified from receiving consulting services in the project.
13.   Midterm and oral feedback will be carried out and may also be recorded with the consent of the participant.
14.   Some recorded feedback will be taken at the end of the research, under the same conditions mentioned above.
15.   lawyers and mediators, who referred clients will be able to consult with the counsellor on the matter, only with confidentiality permission from the client and upon payment.
16.   The project’s clients will be able to choose a supplementary service provider from a list on the portal. However, the project has no responsibility for the quality or its success.
17.   The terms of the agreement and fees will be agreed between the service provider and the client.

18.   We undertake that there will be no conflicts of interest with the clients, their lawyers, or mediators. In the case of a conflict of interest, we will disqualify them without giving explanations to the third party to preserve the confidentiality of the clients.