Privacy Notice

This privacy notice sets out how we use and protect any information that you give us when you visit this website or when you contact us by other means and the lawful basis under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulations (‘GDPR’ ) that permits us to do so.

Children and young people under the age of 16 must have the consent of their parent, guardian or carer in order to contact us via the website, email, or by phone.

At first contact

We will collect the following information in order to establish if we can provide you with our psychotherapy services:

  • Your name
  • Date of birth
  • Contact information including your email address
  • Geographic information
  • Other information relevant to you engaging in therapy with us, e.g. the name of your medical practice
  • Emergency contact details
  • Information about any disability or communication difficulty you may have
  • At first contact you may also choose whether or not to share with us a brief description of what is bringing you for therapy now.

This information is held online via a secure end to end encryption cloud or in a locked cabinet that can only be accessed by your therapist. Please be aware that we will not routinely contact your GP. However, should the circumstance arise where we need to contact your GP in order to fulfil our duty of care, we would discuss this with you wherever possible before hand.

During Therapy

  • Brief, anonymised therapy notes will be written. Your identity is protected and these notes are not shared with anyone unless we are legally required to do so or the client specifically requests we share them with another third party, which we have the right to refuse to do
  • In the event that confidentiality must be broken (for example, if you disclose abuse/neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires me to disclose information), we will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

Therapists are required to have regular supervision where clients cases are discussed. The supervisor also abides by codes of ethics regarding confidentiality.

After therapy has ended

  •  In the case of financial transactions, personal information must be retained for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes.
  • In accordance with insurance guidelines notes will be kept for 7 years, after which they are destroyed. If you are under 18 at the time of therapy we keep your notes for 7 years from the date you would turn 18 years old.

Where we store your personal data

  • We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy notice and our data protection and confidentiality policies.
  • Any paper information (including contracts signed by the client) are kept in a locked filing cabinet.
  • Clinical notes are kept either electronically or in written form. Paper notes are keep in a locked cabinet only accessible to the therapist and digital notes are mainly kept on a secure cloud. Otherwise they will be kept on a password protected laptop (only accessed by the therapist).
  • Phone diaries or IPads to keep a track of appointments are password protected.

Website visitors

By accessing the website, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this privacy notice. Should you choose to contact me using the contact form on the website none of the data that you supply will be stored by the website or passed to any third party data processors. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to me over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by local computers and devices.

The website uses cookies and Google Analytics. Almost all websites use cookies which are small files that get put on your computer by websites as you surf them. These cookies can store lots of information which can have privacy implications. 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 websites. In many cases the cookies are used to generate identical information to Google Analytics and indeed use Google Analytics, so opting-out of Google Analytics will also opt you out of these cookies too. You can opt out of Google analytics and other Google services here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and https://www.google.com/dashboard/

Your rights

Under GDPR, 2018 guidelines you have the right to request access to the personal information that we store and process about you. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

Queries

‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person or organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is Heidi Wreford. Heidi is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the way in which we handle your personal information you can contact us at heidi@therapyjourney.co.uk

Complaints

If you have a complaint about how we handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch. You also have the right to make a formal complaint by contacting 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.

Changes to privacy notice

This privacy notice may be updated from time to time, so please check occasionally for any updates