Privacy Notice

Confidentiality: All sessions will be conducted in confidence and what we explore in our sessions remains confidential with a few exceptions you’ll need to be aware of. All my practice is supervised by a senior practitioner and colleagues. I will therefore share some of the content of our sessions with them to ensure I receive the appropriate support in my work with you. There are certain legal exceptions to confidentiality agreements in therapy and in rare cases I reserve the right to waive the confidentiality agreement, for example if I strongly believe there is a risk of danger to a third party. Confidentiality may also be waived if you disclose a serious threat to harm yourself. I will endeavour to notify and discuss this with you before taking any such action.

Data protection: In accordance with data protection legislation you have the right to know what information I will keep about you and how I will store it. The data I will hold is your name, phone number, email address, GP details, and attendance and payment records. This information will be kept securely on a password protected computer in encrypted and password protected documents. Your phone number and email address will also be kept on a PIN number protected mobile phone and will be deleted when you end therapy.

Therapists are required to keep a ‘professional will’, which means that in the event of me suddenly becoming incapacitated and unable to work, you will be contacted and notified by an executor of the will. Your name and contact details will thus be shared in this respect. The executor of the will is a member of my peer supervision group who is also bound by confidentiality.

I make brief notes from our sessions. Notes will be logged in date order and notes are identifiable by your initials only and stored separately from your contact details.  Most of my notes will be in paper form and are kept to assist our work and for administrative and insurance requirements and stored in a locked private filing cabinet. In accordance with regulations, notes are kept for 7 years and will thereafter be deleted/shredded. You may make a request to access your personal data which I would need to respond to within 30 days.

I use my phone and email primarily for brief conversations related to appointments. I do not offer therapy via email, texts or over the phone. Please note that although my emails are Gmail encrypted, it is not a fully secure means of communicating. I recommend you are thoughtful about what you include in emails to me and only include non-confidential information. Please note that I don’t communicate via social media networks with current or past clients.

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