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 (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. This privacy policy tells you what I will do with your personal data from initial point of contact through to after your counselling has ended.
I am registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). My registration number is ZB247191.
The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. The reasons for me holding and using your personal information may include;
Initial Contact
When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services, I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This might include the following information;
Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send me your details when making an enquiry or a parent/carer/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 6 months. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.
While you are accessing counselling
I will always ensure confidentiality where possible, however in certain specific instances this will not be possible. Please refer to the counselling agreement for further information on confidentiality and the circumstances when it may need to be broken.
I will always try and speak to you first about this, unless there are safeguarding/legal issues that prevent this. My work with under 18's means I also need to consider my duty of care to this client group.
I will keep a record of your personal data to help the counselling service run smoothly. These details are kept securely on paper in a locked filing cabinet, as well as digitally on my google drive/gmail account.
I may keep brief written notes of our sessions, these are anonymised with a code system and are not stored with your personal information.
For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than 6 months. If there is relevant information contained in a text message, I will keep a record of this information with your session notes and/or personal data. Any email correspondence that is not relevant and does not need to be kept as part of your file, will be deleted within 6 months.
After counselling has ended
Once counselling has ended, your records will be kept for 7 years from the end of our contact with each other and then securely destroyed. For young people under the age of 18, your records will be kept until you turn 25 years of age and then will be securely destroyed.
I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal data. 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;
You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. Periodically, I will send out an 'update to client information' form, which will give you the opportunity to update your personal information.
To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing, addressing it to: lucybethhoskins@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 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.
I take the security of the personal data I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. Any counselling session notes and personal information kept on paper, is stored in a locked filing cabinet at my home address. Any digital information is stored on my google drive/gmail account, which can only be accessed via 2 step verification. I do access emails and text messages on my smart phone, which is accessed only via a passcode and/or fingerprint verification.
When someone visits my website, I use a third party service, GoDaddy, 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 my website. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not make, and do not allow GoDaddy to make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website.
I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal data in this way when you visit my website.
I use Google Analytics so that I can continually improve my service to you. You can read Google Analytics privacy notice here: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
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