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 UK data protection legislation, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK 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, and the consequences of not providing certain information
• How long I store it for
• Whether there are any other recipients of your personal information
• Confirming that your data will not be transferred to another country
• Confirming that I do not perform automated decision-making or profiling
• Your data protection rights

Information I Collect

The personal information I collect includes:

• Your name
• Address
• Date of birth
• Your GP’s details
• Medical conditions (physical or psychological)
• Contact details (email, telephone number)
• Emergency contact details

This information is required to assess your needs, determine whether my services are suitable for you, and to provide you with safe and effective therapy services. Failure to provide this information may result in an inability to offer you these services.

Data Controller

‘Data Controller’ is the term used to describe the person or organisation that collects, 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 (reference: ZA282779).

My phone number is 07805 298352, and my email address is anitajonescounsellor@proton.me.

My Lawful Basis for Holding and Using Your Personal Information

The UK GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data. I have explained these below:

• During Initial Contact and While You Are Accessing Counselling: 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.
• After Counselling Has Ended: 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.

The UK GDPR also ensures 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, address, date of birth, mobile number, and why you are considering coming into therapy. This information is required to assess your needs and determine whether my services are suitable for you. Alternatively, your GP or another health professional may send me your details when making a referral, or a trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf.

If you decide not to proceed, please let me know and I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within 2 weeks of your decision. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.

While You Are Accessing Counselling

Please be assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. However, there are limitations to that confidentiality: in adherence to the BACP’s ethical code and in compliance with UK law, I am obliged to break confidentiality if you were to disclose involvement in or knowledge of an act of terrorism, money laundering, drug trafficking, or harm to others. I also have a legal obligation to report harm or abuse to a minor or vulnerable adult.

If there is a serious concern of harm to yourself, it may be necessary to contact your GP; wherever possible, this will be discussed thoroughly with you first, but there may be an occasion when I may need to contact your GP without your prior permission.

Your Rights

I try to be as open as I can 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 https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

Data Security

I take the security of the data I hold about you very seriously, and as such, I make every effort to make sure that it is kept secure. All personal data is stored securely. My computer is password protected, and any sensitive data, including email correspondence, is handled using encrypted services such as Protonmail. Counselling via audio, webcam, or instant messaging (chat) is conducted via secure, encrypted providers such as Zoom or VSee. Your first name and mobile number will be stored on my mobile phone which is encrypted and protected by face-ID recognition.

Counselling notes are anonymised, brief, factual, and stored securely in a locked filing cabinet in my home.

While I make every effort to ensure the data integrity of the encrypted online platforms I use, and choose the most secure options available, I cannot guarantee that they are 100% secure.

For security reasons, I encourage you to only use text messaging to communicate scheduling information, as I may do. Once we have concluded our counselling sessions, I will delete any text communication after 1 month. Likewise, any email correspondence will be conducted through my encrypted Protonmail account and deleted after 1 month if it is not important. If necessary, I will transfer email correspondence onto a password-protected memory stick, which will be stored in a locked filing cabinet.

Visitors to 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 WebHealer as the content management system for my website. You can find out about WebHealer and data protection in their Privacy Policy.

Like most websites, it uses cookies to help the site work more efficiently. You can find out about the use of cookies in WebHealer’s Privacy Policy.

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.