Privacy Notice

In order to provide you with the best service possible I need to hold your personal contact details and records of your therapy sessions. This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after therapy has ended. 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. I also adhere to the ethical guidelines regarding protecting client privacy and confidentiality set by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

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. If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. 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. 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 therapy sessions) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you).

How I use your information

I will never use your personal data for any purposes other than the administration of the therapy service that I am providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments. I will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Initial contact: When you contact me to book your first appointment I will collect some brief information to help me to process your enquiry. This will include your name so that I can book the appointment into my diary and also a contact method, for example an email address or phone number. This information is requested so that you could be informed if I was unable to attend an appointment due to unforeseen circumstances. If you do not want to be contacted under any circumstances you do not need to provide a contact method. If an enquiry is made and you decide not to proceed I will ensure that all of your personal data is deleted within one month. If you would like me to delete this information sooner please let me know.

While you are accessing therapy: Your email address or phone number will be used to provide you with written confirmation of your appointment times if you have given consent for this. Your email address and telephone number will only be used to contact you regarding appointment times unless we have agreed that I will also use your email address to email you information that is relevant to your therapy sessions.
At the beginning of your first appointment I will gather some personal details ie.  your name, address, date of birth, contact information.  I will ask you for GP details if a need arises.  To fulfil my duty of care towards you while also maintaining your confidentiality I will only contact your GP if it is necessary and should these circumstances arise I would discuss this with you wherever possible before contacting your GP.

Rest assured that what is said in our sessions will be kept confidential. I am a Member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and I abide by their framework. Confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal or ethical obligations to disclose, for example, if you disclose abuse/neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires me to disclose information. In the event that confidentiality must be broken I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

Counsellors are required to have regular supervision support so I may discuss our work with my supervisor. This would be done without identifying you and my supervisor is a counsellor who also abides by the BACP’s framework regarding confidentiality.

I keep brief notes of our therapy sessions for the purpose of assisting our work together. The notes help me to keep track of the issues that we are working on and they are for my use only.  Your personal details/GP form, notes and signed contract is stored electronically and are password protected.

After therapy has ended: 

There are reasons why counsellors are required to keep records after therapy has ended. For example, in the case of financial transactions personal information must be retained for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes. Retaining your therapy notes ensures that I can continue to offer you an efficient service if you make contact after therapy has ended. Seven years after therapy has ended your therapy notes and forms will be confidentially destroyed in accordance with current industry guidelines.

Third party recipients of personal data

I do not share personal data with third parties and where I must fulfil legal obligations in respect of tax and accounting purposes, only a unique reference number will be shared, and this reference does not identify you. I will never pass on your contact details to any third party organisations for the purposes of sales, marketing or research.

Data security
I take the security of the data that I hold about you very seriously. My email account is password protected and mobile phones and laptops used to respond to your emails are password protected and have anti-virus software. 

Website visitors
By accessing the website, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this privacy notice. Should you choose to contact me using the contact form on the website none of the data that you supply will be stored by the website or passed to any third party data processors. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to me over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by local computers and devices.

Your rights
Under GDPR, 2018 guidelines you have the following rights: The right to request access to the personal information that I store and process about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information held or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask me to restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters. Please also be aware that there may be a charge for complying with a request if it is deemed to be excessive in nature.

Queries
‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person or organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is Fiona Campbell and I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as ‘Glenholt Psychotherapy Limited’.  As Data Controller you can contact me via phone on 07737237779 or email at 1fionacounselling@gmail.com

Complaints
If you have a complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch by email at 1fionacounselling@gmail.com. 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.

Changes to privacy notice
This privacy notice may be updated from time to time, so please check occasionally for any updates.