Privacy Policy

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 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 policy 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 email at charisashtontherapy@gmail.com. ‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is me. You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner who is the Data Privacy Regulator for the UK.

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 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 and contact details, ie email address, mobile 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 six months. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.

While you are accessing counselling

During the initial consultation process I may ask for your home address, your GP details and information relating to your psychotherapy including, for example, sensitive information such as health information, which you choose to share with me. I collect this information directly from you during the initial consultation.

Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there is a risk of serious harm to yourself or another person or child, or a legal obligation. I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

All members of the BACP are required to have regular supervision. My work continues to be supervised to ensure that it is safe, ethical and effective. Aspects of our work may be discussed during these sessions, but no full name will be used and identifiable details removed.

I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. I will keep brief anonymised notes of each session. I use encryption and other security measures to safeguard your data and will not share it with any third party. For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than six months. If there is relevant information contained in a text message I will retain this on a password protected mobile device. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after six months if it is not important. If necessary, I will retain emails on a password protected personal computer and mobile device.

After counselling has ended

Once counselling has ended, your records will be deleted once the period deemed necessary by the professional bodies I belong to has elapsed. If you want me to delete your information sooner, please tell me.

Third party recipients of personal data

I do not share personal data with third parties.

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.

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, 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 charisashtontherapy@gmail.com.

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.

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. I use encrypted devices, a locked filing cabinet for written notes and anonymised notes.

Visitors to my website

My website is built in and hosted by Squarespace. When someone visits my website, Squarespace collects 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 use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit my website. I use Squarespace analytics so that I can continually improve my service to you.

Like most websites, Squarespace uses cookies to help the site work more efficiently. Click here to find out more about the cookies Squarespace uses.

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 my website dashboard before being sent to me.