Privacy and confidentiality statement

 

Your privacy is highly important to me; I will ensure that your personal information is kept securely and that it 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 do with your personal information from our initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended. If you have any questions about my data protection policy, please contact me at: k.gifford_counselling@fastmail.co.uk.

 

‘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, I am the data controller. I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (registration number ZB503701). My postal address is: E8 Therapy, 489 Kingsland Rd, London E8 4AU, UK.  My phone number is: 07944 485 428. My email address is k.gifford_counselling@fastmail.co.uk.

 

 

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 counselling) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you).

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How I use your information

 

In line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office, I will only use your personal data for the administration of the therapy service that I am providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments, and I will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary.

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Initial contact

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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, so that I can book your appointment in my diary, as well as a contact method (e.g. your email address or phone number). This information is requested so that you can be informed if I am 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 you decide not to proceed, I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one month. If you would like this information deleted sooner, please let me know.

 

 

While you are in counselling

 

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 ask you to complete a personal details form containing your name, address, date of birth, contact information, and contact information for your GP. The form is stored on an encrypted laptop that can only be accessed by me. Please be aware that I will not routinely contact your GP to inform your GP of your attendance since your attendance at counselling sessions is confidential. To fulfil my duty of care towards you, while also maintaining your confidentiality, I would only contact your GP in an emergency. If such circumstances arise, I would make every effort to discuss this with you before contacting your GP.

 

 

Confidentiality

 

Everything you discuss in our sessions will be kept confidential. I am an Accredited Member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and I abide by their professional code of ethics. I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely on an encrypted laptop and are not shared with any third party.

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 Confidentiality will only be broken if there is a legal or ethical obligation to do so. Situations in which I am ethically obliged to break confidentiality include; if you disclose harm or neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, if you disclose an intention to cause serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires me to disclose information. In the unusual event that confidentiality must be broken, I will always try to speak to you 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 code of ethics 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 with, and they are for my use only. The notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and they are stored securely in a locked filing cabinet that only I have access to. Your therapy notes are stored separately from your personal details form.

 

For security reasons, I do not retain text messages for more than a week. If there is relevant information contained in a text message, I will add it to my records which are kept securely on an encrypted electronic device. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after two weeks if it is not important. If necessary, I will archive and encrypt the email for storage on a passworded electronic device.

 

 

After ending therapy

 

Counsellors are required to keep information regarding financial transactions for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes. In accordance with current BACP guidelines, I retain your notes for seven years after therapy has ended which means that Retaining your therapy notes ensures that I can continue to offer you an efficient service if you make contact after therapy has ended. Your therapy notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and continue to be stored securely in a locked filing cabinet that only I have access to for seven years after therapy has ended. This time frame adheres with current industry guidelines. Seven years after therapy has ended your therapy notes will be confidentially destroyed.

Your personal details form is confidentially destroyed on ending your therapy sessions. Please note that I need to keep a record of your name, date of birth and your client reference number for seven years after therapy ends. Your client reference number corresponds with a client reference number on your therapy notes and therefore enables me to identify your therapy notes if necessary.

 

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 7 years from the end of our contact with each other and will then be securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me.

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Third-party recipients of personal data

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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 ensure that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted.

 

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 its, 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.

 

 

Your rights

 

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 addressing it to k.gifford_counselling@fastmail.co.uk. 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 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 the security of the data I hold about you very seriously and make every effort to keep it secure by using encrypted electronic devices.

 

 

Visitors to my website

 

When someone visits my website, I use a third-party service, Wix, 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 make, and do not allow Wix 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.I use Wix so that I can continually improve my service to you. You can read Wix privacy notice here. I use Wix as the content management system for our website - find out about Wix and data protection.Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently.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.

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