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 your personal information 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
Your data protection rights

We are happy to chat through any questions you might have about our data protection policy and you can contact us via email or phone. ‘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 Kanan Robinson. I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office ZA784001. My postal address is 5 Dale Close, Brackley. Northants. NN13 7BT. My phone number is 07512 555709. My email address is: hello@introspection.help.

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

If you have had therapy 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 therapy or if you are in contact with us to consider therapy, we will process your personal data 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 ourselves and you).

How we use your information

Initial contact
When you contact us with an enquiry about our counselling services we will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include:

Your name and address
Contact information such as email and telephone number

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.

If you decide not to proceed we will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one month. If you would like us to delete this information sooner, just let us know.

While you are accessing counselling
Rest assured that everything you discuss with us is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal or ethical obligations for us to do so. We will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
We will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly, namely:

Contact details
Date of birth and gender
Next of kin and emergency contact details
Difficulties being faced
Personal history
Safeguarding information
The name and address of the family GP and school if appropriate

These details are kept securely as an electronic record on secure data systems or as a paper record in locked filing cabinets and are not shared with any third party.

We will keep brief notes of each session, these are kept securely as an electronic record on secure data systems or as a paper record in locked filing cabinets and are kept separate from your personal details. For security reasons we do not retain text messages for more than one month. If there is relevant information contained in a text message we will record this on your therapy notes. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after one month if it is not important. If necessary we will record this in your therapy notes.

After counselling has ended
Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for seven years from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want us to delete your information sooner than this, please tell us.

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

We try to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. 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 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 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 hello@introspection.help

If you have any complaint about how we handle your personal data 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 mour 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.

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

Data security
We take the security off the data we hold about you very seriously and as such we take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. Our email account is password protected and mobile phones and laptops used to respond to your emails are password protected and have anti-virus software.

Visitors to our website
When someone visits our website, we 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 IONOS 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 your personal information in this way when you visit our website.
I use IONOS so that I can continually improve my service to you, You can read IONOS privacy notice here https://www.ionos.co.uk/digitalguide/online-marketing/web-analytics/.

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