Privacy Policy
Practice overview
In order for me to be able to fulfil my responsibilities as a counsellor, I'll need to record some personal information about you. This information includes your name, address, contact details, and GP practice. Under an identifying code I'll also takes notes of 'assessment information', which is relevant medical information and aspects of your personal, social and family history that you choose to share with me. This information will be retained securely (keeping your name and contact details separate from the assessment notes).
Your contact details will be used to contact you. Other personal data such as your name, address and/or date of birth will be used to verify your identify if there is a need to contact your G.P. or a request for access to personal data from yourself or your representative or legitimate legal instrument such as a court order.
This personal information will be held for a period of seven years after the cessation of the counselling relationship, except where there is a mutually agreed decision to retain it for longer or where changes in law or ethics require a different time period. After this time the notes will be shredded.
Information handling
Your contact details, such as telephone number and address, will be shared in exceptional circumstances with my supervisor in the event that I am incapacitated, so that they may contact you to explain the situation.
I will record notes of each therapy session under an identifying code, which will be a brief factual record of the session. This set of notes will include any agreements made with regard to, for example, cancelled sessions or changes to the way the therapy is conducted. The notes are held in a secure folder.
Anonymised notes may be shared with my supervisor, counselling professional body or similar for purposes of maintaining professional standards and my professional development.
There may be circumstances under which information from counselling is made available to third parties and these are explained in the initial contract.
Under normal circumstances I may hold your contact no and initials on a mob phone, and on email, until counselling ends. My phone may retain records of contacts made to or from you for some time and there may be details stored in the cloud for backup purposes. Once counselling has ended, I will delete these records within one month. It should be understood that although I take precautions to protect your data, no technology is 100% secure and that I cannot guarantee that email, telephone and video service providers will always keep your data safe. I will endeavour to use the most secure systems and password protect notes held online.
I support the rights you have regarding the management of your personal information as given in the General Data Protection Regulations May 2018.
Website privacy
This website does not collect cookies or any other form of identifying information. We process and store the information you provide to us via our contact form for as long as necessary. By using the contact form on this website, you are agreeing to the terms and conditions set out in this policy. All data is held for as long as necessary and then destroyed.
You can find a full copy of my privacy policy using the link below.