Introduction

Your privacy is very important to me and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from the initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended, including:

• Why I am able to process your information and for what purpose am processing it.
• Whether you are required to provide it to me.
• How long I will store it.
• Whether there are other recipients of your personal information.
• Whether I intend to transfer it to another country.
• Whether I do automated decision-making or profiling.
• Your data protection rights.

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via grace.therapies@outlook.com.

‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is me.

My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information

The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data. These are explained below:

• The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me, appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case Counselling) and necessary for a Contract with a health professional (in this case, a Contract between me and you).
• If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our Contract.
• If you have had therapy with me and it has ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

How I use your information

Initial contact - When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services, I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include your name, email address, telephone number and a general overview about what you would like to bring to counselling. Alternatively, your GP or another health professional may send me your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf.

If you decide not to proceed, I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within 3 months. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, please contact me.

While you are accessing counselling

Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if I believe that you (the Client) or others are at serious risk of harm or danger. If you tell me that you are involved in an act of terrorism, drugs trafficking, money laundering or if I believe a child is at risk of harm, I am legally responsible to report these to the emergency services.

In addition, I have regular supervision, as a requirement of my membership with BACP and I discuss Client work with my supervisor who I see on a monthly basis. You will remain anonymous throughout supervision sessions as, they are confidential. I will always try to speak to you about this first unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely in a locked cabinet at my home and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session; these are also kept in a locked cabinet at my home. For security reasons, I do not retain text messages for more than one month. If there is relevant information contained in a text message, I will transfer the information onto your counselling notes and keep them locked away securely at my home. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after one month if it is not important. Where it is important, I will make a paper record and keep this locked away securely at my home.

After counselling has ended

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 6 years from the end of our contact with each other and will then be securely destroyed, this is for insurance purposes. If you require me to delete your information sooner than this, please contact me.

Third-party recipients of personal data

I sometimes share personal data with third parties, for example, where I have contracted with a supplier to carry out specific tasks. In such cases, I have carefully selected which partners I work with. I take great care to ensure that I have a Contract with the third party that states what they are allowed to do with the data I share with them. I will ensure, where possible, that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted. The email that I use is provided by Microsoft, while I am assured that this service is secure, there may be times when Microsoft can acquire some data such as an IP address which is needed to send the email in the first place. Microsoft also have a privacy notice in place and are committed to keeping any data secure. Microsoft's privacy notice can be found here.

My website is hosted by WebHealer, while I am assured that this service is secure, there may be times when WebHealer can acquire some data such as an IP address, your name, enquiry and email address when you fill out a contact form on my website. WebHealer also has a privacy notice in place and are committed to keeping any data secure, this privacy policy can be found here.

Your rights

I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

If I do hold information about you I will:

give you a description of it and where it came from.

tell you why I am holding it.

tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision.

tell you who it could be disclosed to.

let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you.

To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing to me at grace.therapies@outlook.com.

If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. I would welcome any suggestions for improving my data protection procedures.

If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Data security

I take security of the data I hold about you very seriously and as such, I make every effort to make sure it is kept secure. Your Client Contract, notes and any worksheets from our sessions are kept in a locked cabinet. I am the only person with access to the keys. Any electronic device used is password protected and is not accessible to anyone else. Although I have listed the third-party services I use for email, telephone, text and my website, I am assured that these services are secure and safe to use in terms of data. My telephone is password locked at all times when I am not using it and I am the only person who knows the password, therefore, your data is kept secure.

Visitors to my website

When someone visits my website, I use a third-party service, WebHealer, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. I do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not request WebHealer to make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website.

I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit my website.

WebHealer is used as the content management system for our website - find out about WebHealer’s data protection here.

Like most websites cookies are used to help the site work more efficiently - find out about the use of cookies here.

No user-specific data is collected by me or any third party. If you fill in a form on my website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to me.