Privacy

As part of my privacy policy, I will always keep any information provided through this website confidential.

I will not contact you unless you indicate that you would like me to do so e.g. by sending me an email or telephoning me.

I take your privacy seriously and will never share your personal details with a third party, without your permission.

For more information please contact me.

For the purpose of contacting you about your counselling sessions, I collect:

• Your name
• Your address
• Your phone number
• Your next of kin
• Your email address

I am registered as the Data Controller for my business with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and take the protection of your data very seriously.  I store your contact details on my electronic devices which are password protected. After two months of our working relationship ending, I will delete your information. You have a right at any time to ask what information I hold on you.

If you feel there has been a breach of your data and wish to raise a complaint you can contact me directly in the first instance.

If my responses are not acceptable to you, you can contact the Information Commissioners Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 11 13.

 

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 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

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, including:

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

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via suzanneinnercalmcounselling@gmail.com.  ‘Data roller’ 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, Suzanne Liddiard. I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office Registration Number ZB728631. Inner Calm Counselling.

My phone number is: 07874 294631. My email address is: suzanneinnercalmcounselling@gmail.com.

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.

I have explained these below:

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).

How it might look

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 and phone number. 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 within 3-5 working days. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.

While you are accessing counselling. Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if illegal or ethical obligations are disclosed:

1. Suspected child abuse or neglect: If there is reason to believe that a child is being abused or neglected, I am legally required to report this information to the appropriate authorities.
2. Imminent risk of harm: If you express a serious threat of harm to yourself or someone else, I may need to take steps to ensure your safety or the safety of others. This may involve notifying appropriate individuals or authorities.
3. Court order or subpoena: In some cases, a court of law may issue an order or subpoena requiring the disclosure of your counselling records or testimony. If this occurs, I will make reasonable efforts to notify you and seek legal guidance before proceeding.
4. Consultation and supervision: I may consult with my supervisor to ensure the quality of service and seek professional advice. However, your identity and personal information will remain confidential during these discussions.

I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

The BACP Privacy Notice guide 1-4

I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely on fully secure cloud-based software and are not shared with any third party.

I will 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 and you are not identifiable by these notes. These are kept securely in a locked filing cabinet.

For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than the duration of your sessions. If there is relevant information contained in a text message, I will transfer these to your secure notes. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after our sessions are complete if it is not important. If necessary, I will transfer these to your secure notes.

After counselling has ended.

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 5 years from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me.

Third party recipients of personal data

I sometimes share personal date 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.

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 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.

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 suzanneinnercalmcounselling@gmail.com.

How it might look Data security

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.

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.   All my client information is stored both electronically on devices that are password and/or I.D protected, and in files that are further protected and only accessible by me.  Names and contact details are stored separately to other personal information (anonymised format).  Information is stored physically using paper records held securely in locked storage in an anonymised format.  These records are only accessible by me.

Visitors to my website

When someone visits my website, I use a third-party service, MonsterInsights 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 MonsterInsights 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 Google Analytics so that I can continually improve my service to you. Google Analytics is a service provided by Google that gathers anonymous data on how people are using websites and then provides visitor statistics, details of page views etc. This service is used by many website owners as the data helps website owners to improve their website.

Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently – find out about our use of cookies https://allaboutcookies.org/ .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.