P r i v a c y P o l i c y
Your privacy is very important to me. You can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used to communicate with you and provide counselling. I adhere to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) Data Protection Act 2018, and I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office – registration number: ZB679288.
Please find below details of my privacy notice explaining how and why I collect personal information. It informs you how I will store and handle your personal data and explains your rights in relation to this data. It also states the conditions under which I may disclose your personal data to others and how I keep it secure. If you have any questions regarding the privacy notice then please feel free to discuss them with me.
Information I will hold about you:
It is important for me to keep some personal information about you which includes:
Your name, date of birth, address, and contact details.
The name and telephone number of an emergency contact.
This emergency contact would only be contacted if anything happened to you during our session and it is considered that someone needs to support you after the session.
Name, address and full contact details of your GP:
It is my responsibility to ensure your safety and wellbeing whilst we have our sessions together and if I felt this was at risk I may have to contact your GP/ healthcare professional. In these circumstances I would try to consult with you first. Please be assured that this process is always and only about you receiving the best possible care that could extend beyond what I can offer.
Any medication or medical history that you feel is relevant to disclose to inform our work together.
The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) recommend that counsellors keep notes of therapy sessions. My session notes, in paper format, will be brief, factual, anonymous and only identifiable by a Unique Reference Number.
Sharing of Data
As outlined above, your data may be shared with other professionals to maintain your safety and well-being. Confidentiality is an important part of therapy, however, if you disclose information that raises significant concerns of serious harm to yourself and or to others, then I may need to breach confidentiality. In the case of a disclosure concerning a serious crime, an act of terrorism or drug trafficking, I will be obliged to inform the relevant authorities.
As a counselling professional and member of the BACP, I have regular professional supervision. This involves discussing my clinical work with another experienced counsellor/therapist who adopts the same confidentiality policy. To further guarantee your anonymity, I do not share full names or any other identifiable data when discussing my counselling work. The purpose of supervision is to allow me to review and monitor my work to ensure I am maintaining high ethical standards and working within professional boundaries.
Data Storage
Your data is stored in paper format, and I separate your personal information and contact details from your session notes into two individual locked folders accessed only by myself.
All electronic correspondence will be via my telephone or laptop that are password protected and only known by me.
Under GDPR you can choose to amend, update or change your personal and contact details at any time. You can also ask to see your session notes by written request. As they are a factual account of the main focus of our sessions, they will be familiar to you. You also have the right to request to have your details destroyed/deleted at any time.
I will only keep your personal information for as long as it is reasonably necessary, and it will be disposed of/deleted after we have finished working together. In accordance with the guidelines set out by my professional indemnity insurers and the BACP, session notes data will be deleted after 7 years.