Therapy With Jess
Privacy Policy
I understand how important your privacy is. I take care to maintain your confidentiality in accordance with current data protection laws (GDPR, 2018) and the ethical guidelines of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy. These guidelines have been set up to protect your confidential material and ensure that your therapist always conducts themselves with professionalism and integrity.
In order to provide you with the best service possible, I will hold your personal contact details and brief records of your therapy sessions. Please find below important information about how this information will be held and used.
Your personal information
I secure, encrypt and password-protected files on a password-protected laptop to store your personal data. At the point of booking your initial consultation with me, you will be asked for your personal contact information, for example, your name, address, email address and telephone number, GP details and you may also choose to share details of the issues you are looking for help with.
Your contact information is stored securely and can only be accessed by me and in the event of my sudden death, my supervisor. This is another qualified therapist who would only contact you to inform you of my demise.
In order to be able to fulfil my duty of care to you, in your initial consultation or first treatment session, I will ask you for contact information for your GP and elected Emergency Contact person. These details will be stored securely and will only be accessible to me.
This personal information will be held for the duration of your therapy after which it will be deleted from my records.
Please note that I will need to keep a record of your name and client reference number for seven years after the end of your therapy so that we can respond effectively to any potential requests regarding your clinical notes and treatment.
I will never pass on your contact details to any third-party organisations for the purposes of sales, marketing or research. I will never use your personal data for any purposes other than the administration of the counselling service I am providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments and collect payment for sessions.
Bookings
When you make a booking, you will receive an email informing you of your session time and date including a payment link. Sessions are to be paid 24 hours before.
Anonymised payment details are recorded in my financial income reports. These reports will only hold your initials as a reference. The HMRC requires that we retain this information for 5 years after the end of the financial year.
Your communications with us
All of our email accounts use the secure Microsoft server and are double password protected. If you send an email to your therapist’s email address, only they will have access to it.
All phones, tablets and laptops used to respond to your emails are encrypted, fully protected with anti-virus software and password protected.
Data Usage
I will only use your email address and telephone number to contact you about your appointments. I may also contact you directly via email in order to share information with you that is pertinent to your therapeutic process.
Your phone number may also be used to issue appointment reminders via text message or to contact you in the case of an unexpected cancellation from me.
Your rights
Any personal data retained by me is kept in accordance with the GDPR, 2018.
Under these guidelines, you have the following rights
The right to be forgotten
You can request that I delete and confidentially destroy the information that I hold about you and your sessions at any time. This request can be made by contacting me at therapywithjess@outlook.com.
Instances where I would not be able to comply with your request are as follows:
a) It is necessary for me to retain these records in order to continue providing an effective service
b) I am compelled to retain these records by a Court of Law
c) I require these records in order to establish, exercise or defend legal claims
Consent
When you book your first session with me you will be asked to provide a digital signature on our joint counselling agreement and tick a checkbox to confirm that you consent to the storage and processing of your personal data for the purposes of providing therapeutic services.
You are entitled to withdraw this consent at any time and can do so by emailing therapywithjess@outlook.com.
Breaches of data protection
In the event of any breach of my data protection policies, I will notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours and will seek to rectify this immediately.
Raising concerns
Should you have any concerns about my data protection practices, you can raise these directly with me. You can also notify the Information Commissioner’s Office.