AI on or off
Chosen per studio and changeable later. Some therapists want the worksheets; others want a quieter resource-sharing space. Both work.
Trust & Ethics
The National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society published six principles for AI in therapeutic contexts. This page is OutSession measured against each of them.
NCPS · Six principles
01
Time-bound
02
Adjunctive
03
Supportive
04
Transparent
05
Safeguarded
06
User-autonomous
The principles are the NCPS’s. The assessment is ours. OutSession isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by the NCPS.
01
Time-bound
The NCPS principle
“Interventions must be time-bound. AI tools should not operate as ‘always on’ therapeutic interventions. Users need space outside of digital input to practise skills and integrate learning in their own time. Sessions should have clear openings and closings.”
Worksheets are discrete exercises with a beginning and an end. You describe a situation, and the tool returns a structured reflection: an empathy playback of what you wrote, questions to sit with, exercises to try.
There is no back-and-forth, no ongoing dialogue, and no chatbot. The closest offline equivalent is a printed thought record, adapted to the situation you described rather than left generic.
02
Adjunctive
The NCPS principle
“The interventions must be adjunctive to therapy: not therapy itself. Where used alongside therapy, AI should support, not replace, therapist judgement. Summaries or prompts should be optional, reviewable at the therapist’s discretion, and never override clinical reflection or supervision.”
OutSession sits beside the work rather than inside it. It exists for the gap between one session and the next, and everything in it points back at the room.
The therapist keeps oversight through the Session Board, on the client's terms. Nothing here is designed to be a destination, and the product works perfectly well in a week where nobody opens it.
03
Supportive
The NCPS principle
“Tools must be supportive - not directive. AI may provide space for psychoeducation, journalling, language-finding, and other non-relational supports. It should not create treatment plans or attempt to replace the reflexive, human processes of therapy.”
Treatment plansDiagnosisClinical recommendationsScoring or rating
CBT exercises only. No treatment plans, no diagnosis, no clinical recommendations, no scoring or rating of the person using it.
The AI adapts established worksheet questions to a described situation. It does not decide what is wrong, judge how someone is doing, or track anything over time. Therapists can switch it off per studio, and clients can switch it off for themselves.
04
Transparent
The NCPS principle
“The tool must be transparent about its limitations. AI must communicate its boundaries clearly, reminding users that it is a supportive tool for reflection and organisation, not a therapeutic relationship. It should also be transparent about the approaches and assumptions embedded in its design.”
Content is labelled as AI-assisted wherever it appears, and the limits are stated in the tools themselves rather than buried here.
Input validation
Crisis + intent check
Generation
Schema validation
Every worksheet passes input validation, a combined crisis and intent check, generation, and schema validation of the output before anyone sees it. Generations by account holders are logged so there is a record to audit.
How data is stored, who processes it, and what we deliberately never collect is set out in full in the privacy policy rather than summarised here. There's a link to it at the foot of this page, and in the footer of every page.
05
Safeguarded
The NCPS principle
“The tool must provide safeguarding support and human escalation. AI tools should be explicit about their safeguarding capacity and limits. When risk thresholds are met, they must signpost users to real, human support, and wherever possible, activate engagement with real, live intervention services.”
OutSession is not equipped for crisis intervention and doesn't present itself as such. What it can do is notice when someone may need more than a worksheet.
Requests are checked for crisis indicators before anything is written. On the free tools a flagged request stops generation and opens the crisis support page. In the studio the thought record is still produced, with support contacts alongside it: Samaritans, Crisis Text Line, NHS 111, and 999 where the flag is urgent. The crisis page adds Mind, CALM, and Papyrus.
- Samaritans
- Crisis Text Line
- NHS 111
- 999 where urgent
- Mind
- CALM
- Papyrus
Before generation, we also classify whether the request suits a CBT reflection at all. Medical symptoms, diagnostic questions, and out-of-scope requests are redirected toward a therapist or GP, warmly rather than dismissively.
06
User-autonomous
The NCPS principle
“Users must retain total autonomy and choice. They must be able to opt in or out of features, adjust levels of interaction, and decide how their data is stored or deleted. Tools should be designed to empower, not to steer or prescribe. Users should be able to feedback at any, and on any, points.”
The therapist sets the boundary when they create a studio, and the client controls what crosses it.
One-way or two-way
Two-way lets the client share items back via the Session Board. One-way means the therapist can share resources in while the studio stays entirely private. A therapist can ask to move from one to the other, and the client accepts or declines.
Item by item
Worksheets and whiteboards stay private until the client shares them. Notes, events, and saved resources are visible from the moment they're made, because those are made in order to be raised, and the client can turn that off on anything.
Nothing is retrospective
Content created before a client accepts a two-way connection can't be shared into it.
That last set exists because of a specific worry we hear often: that a digital tool means one more place a client might say something important and go unheard. Sharing is opt-in per item so that what reaches a therapist is deliberate.
Questions?
We'd rather you asked than assumed.
If something here isn't clear, or you want to know how we'd handle a specific concern, reach out. We'll answer directly.
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