Privacy Notice

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 I am 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 chat through any questions you might have about our data protection policy and you us contact me using the 'contact us' form here.

‘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 us.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office. Reference number: ZB675833. Our postal address is: Mind Matters Counselling, Liquorice Way, Pontefract, WF8 1DR, United Kingdom. My email address is: jodie.mindmatters@gmail.com

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 I am processing your data. We have explained these below:

If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, we 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 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 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 the counsellor).

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 full name and email address. 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 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 me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if:

There appears to be a risk of harm to self or others
We are required to do so by court order, request from ethical body, request by placement or practice or your learning institution (where applicable).
You infer knowledge of or involvement in drugs trafficking.
You infer knowledge of or involvement in behaviours that may, in my opinion, lead to harm or neglect to the children and/or vulnerable adults.

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. These details are kept securely in a locked cupboard, and password secured laptop and are not shared with any third party.

We will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in a locked cupboard. 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 note these down on paper and they will be secured within a locked cupboard. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after one month if it is not important. If necessary we will make note of any important information on paper and they will be secured within a locked cupboard

After counselling has ended

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for no longer than seven 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 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 I 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.

Those third parties might be:

Police
General Practitioners
Counselling Supervisor

Your rights

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 me 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 we 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 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 jodie.mindmatters@gmail.com

If you have any complaint about how we handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. we would welcome any suggestions for improving my 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 ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Data security

We 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.

We record my session notes securely on a laptop that is only used by our counsellors, and this is password protected at both the level of the individual document and the laptop itself. Any paper documents are locked in a robust non-portable cabinet to which only we have access.

Additional information for website owners and employers

Visitors to my website

When someone visits my website, I use a third party service, Google Analytics 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 the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website.

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

We use Go Daddy as the content management system for our website - find out about https://www.godaddy.com/en-uk/legal/agreements/privacy-policy and data protection.

Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently - find out about our use of cookies. https://www.godaddy.com/en-uk/legal/agreements/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.