PRIVACY POLICY

 Introduction

Your privacy is very important to us 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 us.  We 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 we will do with the personal information (data) from initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended, including:

·      Why we are able to process your information and what purpose we are processing it for

·      Whether you have to provide it to us.

·      How long we store it for

·      Whether there are other recipients of your personal information.

·      Whether we intend to transfer it to another country.

·      Whether we do automated decision-making or profiling, and

·      Your data protection rights. 

We are happy to talk through any questions you might have about our data protection policy and you can contact  us via email at lindajaynecounselling@outlook.com.

‘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 responsible party is Linda Jayne Fisher Ltd.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office Registration No. ZA797943. Company Registration No. 12920200

Our postal address is Middle Sutherland, Sheriffhales, Shropshire, TF11 8RA.  Our phone number is 07964533212. Our email address is lindajaynecounselling@outlook.com.

The GDPR requires six lawful bases for processing personal information (data) and additional lawful bases for processing special categories of personal information (data)

Our lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

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

If you have had counselling with us and it has now ended, we will use legitimate interest as our lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

If you are currently having counselling or if you are in contact with us to consider counselling, we will process your personal information where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.

The GDPR also makes sure that we look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to us appropriately.  This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’.  The lawful basis for us 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 us and you).

How we use your information

Initial contact

When you contact us with an enquiry about our counselling services, we will collect some personal information to help us satisfy your enquiry.  This will include your name, address, contact details and preferred method of contact. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send us your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give us your details when making an enquiry on your behalf. For marketing reasons, we will also ask where you heard about us. 

We will then make contact with you and will collect more personal information so that we can make a pre-therapy assessment of whether our skills match your requirements . This will include a brief history and information about your reasons for seeking counselling, details of any medication you are prescribed, any relevant care you are receiving, whether you have had counselling before and emergency contact details, including the contact details of your GP.

If we receive a text message, or an email from you, we will transfer any information (which may be a copy of the email or text) we feel is necessary to the record of your personal information.

Your personal information will be kept in a file within a locked filing cabinet. The pre-therapy assessment notes will be kept in a separate file and locked filing cabinet and will contain no identifiable information.

If you decide not to proceed, no contract to provide therapy will be entered into and we will ensure that the information collected, including any pre-therapy assessment notes will be destroyed within 6 months from the date we receive the enquiry (but see Third Party Recipients of Personal Data  and Visitors to our Website below) If you wish to proceed with therapy after this timescale a new assessment will be undertaken. If you wish us to destroy the information earlier, please let us know.

While you are accessing counselling 

Rest assured that everything you discuss with your Counsellor is confidential.  That confidentiality will only be broken if:

·         Your Counsellor feels that you or someone else is at serious risk of harm.

·         You infer involvement in or knowledge of an act of terrorism, money laundering or drug trafficking.

·         You infer knowledge or involvement in behaviour which may, in the opinion of your Counsellor, lead to harm or neglect to children or vulnerable adults.

·         Your Counsellor or the company is required to do so by Court Summons.

Your Counsellor will try to speak to you about this first unless there are legal reasons or safeguarding issues that prevent her from doing so.

We will keep a record of your personal information to help the counselling service run smoothly. This information is kept in a file within a locked filing cabinet..

Your Counsellor will keep written notes of each session. These are kept in a separate file and locked filing cabinet to that above and include no identifiable information.

If we receive a text message, or an email from you, we will transfer any information (which may be a copy of the email or text) we feel is necessary to the record of your personal information or your counsellor’s written notes, whichever is relevant, both of which will be stored as mentioned above. 

After counselling has ended

Once counselling has ended your personal information and the written notes will be kept for 6 years from the end of our contact with each other in order to comply with the terms of our Professional Indemnity Insurance. Thereafter they will be securely destroyed. 

Third Party Recipients of Personal Data

We will share transaction data with our payment services providers so far as it is required in order to process your payments, refund payments and in order to deal with any queries or complaints relating to the same. Our payment services providers are PayPal and Zettle by PayPal. You can read their privacy policies at: https://www.zettle.com/gb/legal/privacy-policy and https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full

We will sometimes share personal data with third parties, for example where we have contracted with a supplier to carry out a specific task, such as a company that supports our IT, any cloud services or Microsoft Office; professional advisers, such as an accountant or solicitor.

We may share personal data with our insurers for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining insurance cover. Our Insurers are Holistic Insurance Services and you can read their privacy policy at: https://www.holisticinsurance.co.uk/forms/PrivacyPolicy.pdf

In order to comply with a legal or ethical obligation we may be required to disclose personal data. This is explained further in While you are accessing counselling above.

We also sometimes share personal data with regulators such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Companies House or the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can read their privacy policies at https://www.gov.uk/help/privacy-notice https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/

Your rights:  You have a right to ask us to delete your personal information, to limit how we 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 we 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/

If we do hold information about you, we will: 

·         Give you a description of it and where it came from. 

·         Tell you why we have been holding it, tell you how long we will store your data and how we 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 us at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information we hold about you.

To make a request for any personal information we may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to Linda Jayne Counselling Ltd, Middle Sutherland, Sheriffhales, Shifnal, Shropshire TF11 8RA or by email to lindajaynecounselling@outlook.com

If you have any complaint about how we  handle your personal information, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. We would welcome any suggestions for improving our data protection procedures.

If you want  to make a formal complaint about the way we 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  https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

Data Security

We take the security of the data we hold about you very seriously and as such we make every effort to ensure it is kept secure. 

Visitors to our website

When someone visits our website, we may use a third party service to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns.  We 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.  We do not make, and do not allow them to make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

We use legitimate interests as our lawful basis for holding and using you your personal information in this way when you visit our website.

We may use Google Analytics so that we can continually improve our service to you. You can  read their privacy notice at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en_US.

Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently – find out about our use of cookies at: https://www.lindajaynecounselling.co.uk/cookies

No user-specific data is collected by us or any third party.  If you fill in a form on our website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to us.

By continuing to use this website you are agreeing to Linda Jayne Counselling Ltd storing and using your personal data as above.