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 for the purpose it was given to me. I 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 policy explains what information I need to collect from you before therapy commences and what information I may need to collect from you during our work together. Additionally, I will detail how your information will be stored, duration that it will be stored and how, under exceptional circumstances, it may be shared.

Who is responsible for the processing of your personal data?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines a ‘data controller’ as the person in an organisation who: ‘determines the purposes and means of processing personal data’. The ‘data controller’ is Gail Walker (ICO Registration: ZB666425), who can be contacted via gail@gailwalkertherapy.com or 07748 785143, My postal address is available on request.

Why is your personal information required?

Under a legitimate interest, data privacy law allows me to collect your personal information in order to understand your needs and to provide you with a professional service. In certain circumstances, I may also collect your personal information in order to fulfil my ethical and contractual obligations with you and where I may be required by law.

Please note, should you decide to not share your personal information with me, or refuse certain contact permissions, I may not be able to provide the services requested. Examples of how I may use your personal information include:

Initial Contact
When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services, either directly or indirectly through directory services I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include initially your name, email and telephone number and a brief outline of your enquiry reason. If you/we decide after your initial assessment appointment to proceed with therapy, further data will be requested including your GP details, address, DOB and emergency contact.  

If you decide not to proceed, I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within 3 months. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.

 

While you are accessing counselling.
Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if at any time I feel you are at risk of harm to yourself or to/from others; and I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

 

I will keep a record of your personal details and any forms you complete to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details, including brief written notes of each session are kept securely via encryption and password and are not shared with any third party unless requested by your GP, an alternative health or welfare authority or a legal authority. If there is relevant information contained either within a text or email message these also will be kept encrypted or deleted either immediately or after counselling ends if it is not important.

 

During our work together, I record brief notes of what we have talked about during each session. This may contain other personal data you share such as marital status, children, gender, occupation and ‘special category data’ such as mental and physical health details, race, ethnic origin, politics, religion, sex life or sexual orientation. ‘Special category data’ is defined by the GDPR as being information that is more sensitive than other personal information. The condition of the GDPR that I apply to the processing of your special category information is that it is ‘pursuant to contract with a health professional’. This means that, if you begin counselling with me, then I will likely need to process some special category information about you. Usually, this is information about your mental health, and I need to process it in order to fulfil my contractual obligations to you in delivering a safe, effective service.

 

After counselling has ended.
Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for up to six 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 r=formally request this in writing via gail@gailwalkertherapy.com

Third party recipients of personal data.

I sometimes share personal data with third parties, for example, where I have contracted with a supplier to carry out specific tasks. In such cases I have carefully selected which partners I work with. I take great care to ensure that I have a contract with the third party that states what they are allowed to do with the data I share with them. I ensure that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted. This may include Microsoft Office systems for email and safe cloud storage, Zoom Communications Inc. for online sessions; Counselling Directory, Wix.com Ltd for website server hosting and processing of online booking sessions and/or your GP or any other health professional and insurance provider.

Your rights

I try to be as open as I 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 I 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 I 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/for-the-public/your-data-matters-blog/

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 it, tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision and inform you who it could be disclosed to.

You have the right to ask me to provide a copy of the information held in my records. You also have the right to have any inaccuracies in your information corrected. You may withdraw your consent for me to hold and process your data at any time. However, if you do this while actively receiving counselling, your counselling would have to end.

To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to gail@gailwalkertherapy.com

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

Should 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 ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

 

Data Security

I 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.

Your personal information will be stored both electronically and physically. Personal information is stored electronically on devices that are password and/or fingerprint I.D. protected, and in files that are further password protected and only accessible by me; or by an officially appointed clinical executor in the event of my death.

 

Information that is stored physically using paper records, is held securely in locked storage in an anonymised format. Your identifiable

information is kept separate from other personal information and session notes, and are linked by a unique number. This code is stored in a separate location and password protected.

 

Confidentiality

The content of all sessions is kept in the strictest confidence, including all records and notes. However, some situations could result in disclosure being:

 

• If you are considered to be at serious risk to yourself or to other people, then further professional advice could be beneficial and I would have to disclose this information to your GP. 

• Any illegal activities and/or acts of terrorism, where not to disclose would break the law.

• Any safeguarding or child protection issues where a child could be at risk of harm or neglect must be reported to the appropriate authorities as required by The Children Act 1989.

I would always aim to discuss this with you before taking any action, unless I consider that the urgency of the situation requires immediate action to safeguard the physical safety of yourself or others.

As an Accredited MBACP therapist I adhere to BACP (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy) framework (2018) to ensure high quality operational and ethical practice. This includes attendance to monthly supervision. My supervisor also adheres to continuality regulation and your personal data is not shared, besides your first name to protect your identity.

Visitors to my website.

My web server may automatically collect details about your visit, including: IP address, the website from which you linked from, search engine, pages on www.gailwalkertherpy.com that you visit, and other analytical data such as date, time and duration of your website visit.

This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not make, and it does not allow Wix.com Ltd to make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website.

I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit my website; and so that I can continually improve my service to you. 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.

Google analytics only collect non-identifiable data which means I or they cannot identify who is visiting.

Gail Walker Therapy uses cookies for website management purposes. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. The cookies used on www.gailwalkertherapy.com are in the form of analytic tools, which are used to collect information about how people use this website. You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish via accepting or declining, or by checking your browser settings on each device. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of the website.

Internet Security:

Transmission of data and information via this website is not a secure or an encrypted transmission method for sending your personal data. Your attention is therefore drawn to the fact that, any information and personal data carried over the internet is not secure. Information and personal data may be intercepted, lost, corrupted or accessed by other people.

Upon receipt of your personal data Gail Walker Therapy is committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, I have in place appropriate physical and electronic procedures to safeguard and secure the information collected online as outlined above.

This website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave www.gailwalkertherapy.com you should be aware that control over other websites is lost. Therefore, Gail Walker Therapy cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy policy. You should always exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website visited in question.