Introduction

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 date 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

• Whether I do automated decision-making or profiling, and

• Your data protection rights

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via email at annawebstercounselling@gmail.com

‘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, the data controller is me.

I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and my registration reference is C1562501.

My phone number is: 07759 209079. My email address is: annawebstercounselling@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 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 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 name, a method of contact (usually phone and/or email) and a brief outline of your counselling requirement if you are happy to provide it (this, however, is not essential at initial contact stage). 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 one month. 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 I believe that you are a danger to yourself or to someone else or have told me about criminal activity likely to endanger you or someone else. 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. Skeleton details (enough to contact you for the arrangement of sessions) are kept on a password protected phone and laptop. Your full intake details are kept in a locked filing cabinet accessible only by me. Written session notes are kept on a password protected laptop. None of these – contact details or session notes - are shared with any third party.

For security reasons I do not retain text or WhatsApp messages for more than three years. Likewise any email correspondence will be deleted after three years.

After counselling has ended

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

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 it, how long I will store it and how I made this decision;

• Tell you who is 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 to annawebstercounselling@gmail.com.

If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data, please do not hesitate to email me at the address 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 as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure using password protected devices and locked filing cabinets.

If you fill in a contact form on my website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to me.