Riverway Counselling

Privacy Statement

1. Contact Details

Name: Helen Webb

Email: helen@riverwaycounselling.co.uk

2. 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. I also adhere to the ethical guidelines regarding protecting client privacy and confidentiality set by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

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 for 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.

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via email (see my email address at the top).

'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 (ZB780641).

3. Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access - You have the right to ask for copies of your personal information.

Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask me to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask me to complete information you think is incomplete.

Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask me to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask me to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that I transfer the personal information you gave me to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, I have one month to respond to you. Please contact me if you wish to make a request (see my email address at the top).

4. 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.

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. You are able to remove consent from the contract at any time by contacting myself (see my email address at the top).

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).

5. How I use your information

I will never use your personal data for any purposes other than the administration of the therapy service that I am providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments. I will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office.

Initial Contact.

When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services, I will collect some brief information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include your name and also a contact method, for example, an email address or phone 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. If you would like me to add you to my waiting list, I will keep your details in order to contact you again.

While you are accessing counselling.

Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. However, there are limits to confidentiality, such as an indication of serious risk of harm to yourself or others. I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

I am also required to undertake regular supervision in order to monitor my professional practice. For this purpose, I may disclose some details of our work to my supervisor, but your anonymity will be protected. See my contract for more details on confidentiality.

I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling service run smoothly. These details are kept securely and with password protection. They are also not shared with any third party.

I will also keep brief written notes of each session in order to aid the therapeutic process. These therapy notes are anonymised and stored for 7 years. These notes are also password- protected and kept separate from your personal details.

For security reasons, I do not retain any email or text correspondence for more than six months. If there is relevant information contained in an email or text I will store the information with your personal details.

After counselling has ended.

Once counselling has ended, your records will be kept for at 7 years 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.

6. Third-party recipients of personal data

I sometimes share personal data with third parties, for example, where I have contracted with a supplier to carry out specific tasks. In such cases I have carefully selected which partners I work with. I take great care to ensure that I have a contract with the third party that states what they are allowed to do with the data I share with them. I ensure that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted.

7. 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/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 (see my email address at the top).

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/make-a-complaint.

The ICO's address:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

8. 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. All my business including emails, calendar appointments, therapy notes and other personal data are kept on Google Workspace. While I am the data controller, Google is the data processor. This software is password protected and with additional verification security. My computer and mobile phone which are used to respond to your emails are both password-protected.