Privacy Policy

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. 

This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended. I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services I will collect information to help me satisfy my enquiry. Alternatively your GP or other 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. 

Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if you are at harm to yourself or others. 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 filing cabinet and are not shared with any third party unless required for supervision. 

I will keep written notes of each session, these are also kept securely in a locked filing cabinet. For security reasons I do not retain any text messages for more than one week. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted if it is not important. Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 7 years from the end of our contact and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me. 

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 it, 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. 

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

I take the security of the data I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure.