Privacy Notice
Introduction.
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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.
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I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via email, katiedunhamcounselling@gmail.com .
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‘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 [00011276580].
My postal address is: 23a High Street, Wetherby, LS22 6LR. My phone number is: 07353 762896. My email address is: katiedunhamcounselling@gmail.com.
My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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 consent initially. I will then retain any counselling records in case of the need to reference them in the future (the official legal basis is to defend against potential legal claims).
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How I use your information.
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Initial contact.
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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, contact details, DOB, enquiry reasons. 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 90 days. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.
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While you are accessing counselling.
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Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there are concerns around the protection of children or vulnerable adults, regarding terrorist activity, drug trafficking or money laundering, if requested by court order, if I am worried that there is serious risk of harm to yourself or to another. I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
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Please be aware that all counsellors are required to undergo regular supervision, of which some details of your counselling may be discussed to ensure safe and ethical practice. Your information is presented in an anonymised way and is treated confidentially by supervisors.
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I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely on password protected laptop with firewall and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in a locked cabinet to which only I have the key. For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than 90 days. If there is relevant information contained in a text message I will transfer this to a secure document on the laptop. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 90 days if it is not important. If necessary I will transfer relevant information from email to a secure document on the laptop.
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After counselling has ended.
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Unless subject of a court order, or legal requirement, your electronic and hard copy information is stored securely for 5 years (or until you have turned 18 for children and young people) after counselling services have terminated before being deleted/shredded. If you would prefer your information to be deleted sooner than this, please provide a written notice, to the contact details provided above.
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Third party recipients of personal data.
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Your personal information may be shared with selected third parties, for example, for the purposes of supervision. In such cases, third parties are carefully selected, and an agreement exists stating what they are allowed to do with any data shared to them. The agreement stipulates your information is not used in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted.
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Your rights.
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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.
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If I do hold information about you I will:
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• give you a description of it and where it came from;
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• tell you why I am holding it, tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision;
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• tell you who it could be disclosed to;
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• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.
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You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you.
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To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to katiedunhamcounselling@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.
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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.
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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 therefore use up to date firewalls and malware on my laptop and documents are stored using Microsoft OneDrive, a cloud storage system that complies with GDPR. Files are encrypted and access is restricted to myself only, using two-factor authentication, additional file encryption and pseudonymised codes. Any written documents are secured in a locked cabinet to which only I have access.
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Visitors to my website.
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When someone visits my website, I use a third party service, Wix, 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 Wix to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website.
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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 Wix analytics company so that I can continually improve my service to you. You can read Wix analytics privacy notice here https://www.wix.com/about/privacy.
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I use Wix as the content management system for my website. Like most websites they use cookies to help the site work more efficiently. For reference see bacp.co.uk/notices/cookies.
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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.