Privacy Statement
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,
• 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 gracelistening@
‘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 . My ICO registration number is A8443637. My phone number is: [TBC]. My email address is: gracelistening@.
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 psychotherapy) 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 psychotherapy services I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include your name and contact details. Ultimately, you are in control of the data that you wish to supply, I will be conscious to ask only for information from the website that is relevant and necessary. 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 months. 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 where I have statutory obligation to disclose, such as The Terrorism Act 2000. An obligation to report under the Drug Trafficking act 1994, Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 or the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. Under s.21 of the Road Traffic Act 1991, if the police require information about the driver of a vehicle at the time of an offence, it must be disclosed, and failure to do so is a criminal offence. The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 introduced a mandatory reporting duty for all regulated health and social care professionals and teachers in England and Wales. Professionals must make a report to the police, if, in the course of their duties:
• they are informed by a girl under the age o f18 that she has undergone an act of FGM; or they observe physical signs that an act of FGM may have been carried out on a girl under the age of 18.
I will assume a best interests approach, regarding the disclosure of confidential information when a child, young person or vulnerable adult is concerned. 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 psychotherapy services run smoothly. I have a duty to keep records approbate to the service provided, the information will be relevant and limited to what is necessary. These details are kept securely in a locked filing cabinet, and are shredded after 3 months and are not shared with any third party.
I will keep very brief written notes of each session, these are kept for 3 months, and you can ask to see these at anytime, requesting access by email.
For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than 2 weeks. If there is relevant information contained in a text message I will make a written note of, but retention of these notes will be in accordance with my 3 month rule. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 3 months, if it is not important. If necessary I will print this email out and store it sec purely with the brief written notes related to our work together.
After psychotherapy has ended.
Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 3 months 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 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.
External recipients include
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 gracelistening@.
If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by 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.
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, in a locked filing cabinet. I deliberately keep email exchanges very brief and to factual information where possible, encouraging you to discuss further in any sessions.
Visitors to my website
When someone visits my website, I use a third party service, Google Analytics, 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 Google Analytics 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 so that I can continually improve my service to you, Refer to the cookie policy of Google for more information https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245
Google Analytics provides this website with anonymous visitor counts and statistics. This helps us see how many people are using the website and how popular the different pages are. This information is not shared with any third parties.
Opt out of Google Analytics for all websites
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
I use Joomla! as the content management system for our website - find out about Joomla! and data protection.
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Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.
The use of cookies and similar technologies has for some time been commonplace and cookies in particular are important in the provision of many online services. Using such technologies is not, therefore, prohibited by the Regulations but they do require that people are told about cookies and given the choice as to which of their online activities are monitored in this way.
You can disable any cookies already stored on your computer, but these may stop our website from functioning properly.
This website does not collect or store any of your personal information.
This website will:
Use Google Analytics technical cookies only after that you consent to the cookies usage. Refer to the cookie policy of Google for more information
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245
Google Analytics provides this website with anonymous visitor counts and statistics. This helps us see how many people are using the website and how popular the different pages are. This information is not shared with any third parties.
Opt out of Google Analytics for all websites
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Third-Party Cookies
Are installed by websites which don’t belong to us.
For instance, where we include content from Youtube on our own website or buttons which users can use to share content on social networks, a user accessing such content from our own website may have cookies added from these third parties.
We do not control these third party cookies and so the user must review the cookie policies of these other websites for further information.
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.
