Privacy Policy
Supportive Counselling (‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’) are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what we do with it, no matter how you interact with us. We are required to provide you with the information in this Privacy Notice under UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) referred to as the data protection legislation. This Privacy Notice will outline how we collect, use, and protect your personal information.
Supportive Counselling are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller under reference number ZB723196.
By visiting www.supportivecounselling.co.uk, you are agreeing and consenting to this Privacy Notice.
Any changes made to this Privacy Notice will be posted on this page. Please visit this webpage frequently to see any changes to our Privacy Notice.
What information we might collect
When you engage with us by phone, email, online or in person we may (not limited to) collect and process the following personal data about you:
• Name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Email address
• Date of birth
• Emergency contact
• Brief session notes that we use to keep track of our journey together and to help identify patterns to bring to your attention.
How and why we use your information
The legal basis we rely on to process your personal information are set out under Article 6 of the UK GDPR as the following:
(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.
(b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.
We will use your personal information for the following purposes:
• Contact Us form – the data collected in the form will allow me to communicate with you directly to discuss the counselling work and any other query you may have. If you decide not to work with me as a counsellor, or I do not hear back from you in a reasonable time, I will proceed to delete your enquiry from my mailbox.
• Record keeping – to maintain a client record of any assessments, contractual agreements, ongoing or completed counselling work for insurance purposes, good records management and potential legal claims.
Your information is treated with the utmost confidentiality, and it will never be disclosed to any third party without explaining why this may be necessary and getting your consent, except where required to do so by law or where we feel you are at serious risk of harming yourself, harming others or at serious risk of harm from others. Your safety will be our prime objective in these cases.
How long will we keep your information
Your personal information will be retained for up to five years (from the end of our last session), after which they will be securely and confidentially destroyed. We will keep your personal information for no longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, taking into account guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Who do we share your personal information with
We will only use your information for the purposes for which it was obtained, and we will not, under any circumstances, share your personal information with any third party for their own purposes.
We will only share your data for the following purposes:
• Third party suppliers – We may need to share your information with data hosting providers or service providers who help us to deliver our services.
• Legal requirement – We will comply with requests where disclosure is required by law, for example, to support law enforcement agencies for the prevention and detection of crime.
• Safeguarding – We may share your information with emergency services if we reasonable believe there is a risk of serious harm or abuse to you or someone else.
Your rights to your personal information
Data protection legislations give you the right to access your personal information held and processed by any organisation. You can exercise this right by making a verbal or written subject access request (SAR) using the contact information provided on this website. We will respond within thirty calendar days to your SAR, on receipt of your request.
You also have the right to ask us to erase your personal information, ask us to rectify any inaccuracies in the personal information we hold about you or restrict our processing of your personal information or to object to our processing of your personal information. Again, to exercise these rights, please reach out to us through the Contact page.
Information about the Website Host
The website, www.supportivecounselling.co.uk, is hosted by Krystal. You can view information about their privacy policy here: https://krystal.io/legal/privacy-policy
This website uses cookies which are a small file of letters and numbers that are stored on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree to the cookie preferences banner when you visit our website. Cookies are used for the following purposes:
• Strictly necessary cookies are cookies, which are required for the operation of this website.
• Analytical/Performance cookies allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way the website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
• Functionality cookies are used to recognise you when you return to this website. This enables us to personalise our content for you and remember your preferences.
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly.
For more information on how we use Google Analytics and Analytical/Performance cookies, please click here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage
Clinical Will
Your name and contact details will be shared with my Therapeutic Executor on the event of my death, should you still be in therapy with me so that you will remain supported.
How to make a complaint, raise a concern or ask a question
If you would like more information, have any questions about this privacy notice or want to make a complaint about our approach to privacy, please contact us using the information provided below:
Email: info@supportivecounselling.co.uk
Contact number: 07749 024388
If you are not satisfied with the way we use your data, please contact me in the first instance. If we cannot resolve the issue, you can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office by visiting their website www.ico.org.uk or calling them on 0303 123 1113.