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 as set out in this notice. 

I adhere to data protection legislation, including the retained EU law version of 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 (as amended).

I am registered with the Information Commissioner's Office and my registration number is ZB610979.

This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact to after your therapy has ended, including:

· My purpose and lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

· How I use your personal information, when I may share it and how long I keep it.

· Your data protection rights.

I am happy to talk through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via katiecoecounselling@gmail.com.

‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/organisation that collects, stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, I am the data controller.

GDPR states that I must have a purpose for and a lawful basis for processing your personal data.

My purpose is to process your personal data for the performance of our counselling contract and to retain it afterwards for up to 7 years for insurance and legal purposes.

Explained below are the different lawful basis depending on the stage at which I am processing your data:

If you are currently having therapy or supervision or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy or supervision, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract or this service.

If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, my legitimate interest is my lawful basis for holding and using personal information for insurance and legal purposes and in case further counselling is required.

GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special category personal information is that it is in 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 you).

Initial contact will be a free phone call. If you decide to proceed, I will take the following details to help me satisfy your enquiry:

· Name

· Address

· Phone number

· Email address

During our first session together, I will collect further information to help the counselling services run smoothly. This will include:

· GP name and address

· Current medication

· Details of other relevant services you may have a relationship with for example Social Services or Community Mental Health Team

If you decide not to proceed, I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within 30 days. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.

Please rest assured that while you are accessing counselling or supervision everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there is a legal reason to do so or I believe that either yourself or a third party is at risk of serious harm, in which case I may share your information with the appropriate authorities. I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding or legal issues that prevent this. Save for this, I will not share your personal information with any third parties and will not transfer it to any third countries or international organisations.

I will only keep paper records which I store in a locked filing cabinet separate from my counselling room. I will not share these with any third party.

These paper records will include a short note of each session which will not contain any identifying information such as your name or the full names of anybody you might speak about.

For security reasons, I do not generally retain text messages or e-mail correspondence for more than 30 days. If necessary, I will keep any important emails in a separate email folder, access to my email is password protected, along with access to my devices. Your contact details will not be stored on my phone.

 After counselling has ended.

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for up to 7 years from the end of our contract with each other, or from when you turn 18, and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me and I will do what I can to comply. I do have to keep some information to comply with my insurance policy.

Your data protection rights.

You have a number of data protection rights. In particular you have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you in an accessible format and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You also have a right to ask me to delete, correct, limit how I use or to stop processing 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 katiecoecounselling@gmail.com.

You can read more about your rights at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/.

If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by email. 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. For more information go to www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

I take the confidentiality of the data I hold about you very seriously and have measures in place to keep it secure.