Privacy Policy

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 the 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
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 or the form on the Homepage.

‘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 registration number is:

My phone number is: 07832 605 970

My email address is: hannah@counselculture.co.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 the 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, email address, phone number and a little about your current situation and mental health history. 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 7 days. 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 feel there is a risk of you harming yourself or others,
I feel a child is being abused by you or in your presence,
You disclose to me that you are involved in money laundering or drug trafficking,
You disclose to me the planning of terrorist action(s).

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. These details are kept securely in the Carepatron platform and are not shared with any third party.

I will keep brief written therapist notes for each session, these are also kept in the Carepatron platform.

For security reasons, I do not retain text messages for more than 3 months. If there is relevant information contained in a text message I will add this information to your client notes section on the Carepatron platform. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 3 months if it is not important. If necessary I will add any relevant information to your client notes on the Carepatron platform.

After counselling has ended.

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 12 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.

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 www.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 hannah@counselculture.co.uk

If you have any complaints 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 www.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.

Visitors to my website

I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information when you visit my website.

I use Wix as the content management system for my website, collecting enquiry information via Wix's default Form plugin.

Like most websites mine uses cookies to help the site work more efficiently - find out about our use of cookies here.

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.