Data Protection

Privacy Notice

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

• Why I am able to process your information and what purpose I am processing it for
• Whether you have to provide it to me
• How long I store it for
• Whether there are other recipients of your personal information
• Whether I intend to transfer it to another country,
• Whether I do automated decision-making or profiling, and
• Your data protection rights.

I am happy to talk through any questions you might have about my data protection policy.

‘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 me.

I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (Number Reference ZB127034).

The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case therapy) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you). A primary aim of keeping client records is to aid therapy, as well as demonstrating how the therapist has fulfilled their professional obligations and duty of care towards their clients and supervisees.

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 work out how to respond to your enquiry. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional/ party may send me your details when making a referral or making an enquiry on your behalf.

If you decide not to proceed I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one year from the end of the year when you made contact with me.

While you are accessing counselling.

Everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if:

• I am compelled to do so by law.
• I have serious concerns about yours or someone else’s safety, including the safeguarding of children or vulnerable adults. I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this, or I am forbidden by law to do so.

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 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 me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you.

To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing.

If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by emailing.

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 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.

Visitors to my website

When someone visits my website https://adamsandelson.com, this is hosted by WordPress, which use a third party service to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. This can show data such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site, but the information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not make, and do not allow anyone else 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 any personal information in this way when you visit my website.

Most websites use cookies to help the site work more efficiently – to find out more about the use of cookies from the WordPress host, see https://automattic.com/cookies/ and https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/.

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.

If you have any further questions about any aspect of data protection or information management, please feel free to contact me via mail@adamsandelson.com.

Last updated 16.7.21