Hadley Therapy Service Data Protection & Privacy Policy
Client confidentiality is a vital part of safe clinical Psychotherapy. Any personal data provided by you to Hadley Therapy through any means (verbal, written, in electronic form, or by your use of our website) will be held and stored in accordance with the data protection principles set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 and the General Data Protection Regulation for the purposes for which you have given consent, to provide the services you have requested from us, and to meet the legitimate interests of the the organisation.
Introduction
Hadley Therapy is committed to protecting your privacy. Please read the following to learn more about our privacy policy and our information collection and use practices. This policy only applies to data collected by Hadley Therapy staff via our own forms on the website and clinical material. Third-party agents, and websites which might be linked to ours, are not covered by this policy. If you have any queries concerning your personal information, or any questions on our use of the information, please contact the Clinical Director using our contact form. When you request counselling or psychotherapy with Hadley Therapy you will be asked to consent to our processing of your data under the terms of this policy.
What information do we collect?
- Psychotherapy Requests– Registering with us to request access to our therapy service can be done online, on paper or in person. Our request process involves providing us with your name, address, telephone numbers and email address. We may also request information on your availability, therapeutic issues, and other details which we deem relevant to processing your request.
- Initial Assessment Appointments– At an initial appointment we ask about your current personal, social, medical and financial circumstances. We will also ask about your background and family history, as well as the issues which are affecting you now which you can respond to only if you feel comfortable to do so. We require this information so that we can decide about our offer of counselling or psychotherapy to you, to assign you to a counsellor, and to manage the service or referral we will provide to you.
What do we use your information for?
We use information held about you in the following ways:
- To provide clients with the professional counselling service requested from us.
- To enable us to offer appropriate approach and support for our users at an appropriate pace and style.
- To offer suitable therapy appointments, and to allocate clients for psychotherapy.
- To notify you about changes to your appointments and other changes to our services.
- To improve our service to ensure that it is provided in the most effective manner for you and for us.
- To administer our service, including the arrangement of appointments schedules.
- To keep in touch with those who consent to this, for the purposes of organisational, service and professional development.
- To fulfil our administrative, legal and contractual obligations as an employer and to comply with the clinical requirements of the our regulator the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC).
What information do we share?
We will not share any information about you with other organisations or people, except in the following situations:
- Consent – Hadley Therapy may share your information with professional carers or others whom you have requested or agreed we should contact.
- Serious harm – Hadley Therapy may share your information with the relevant authorities if we have reason to believe that this may prevent serious harm being caused to you or another person.
- Compliance with law – Hadley Therapy may share your information where we are required to by law or by the regulations and other rules to which we are subject.
- As part of the backups of encrypted data processed and held by professional IT security companies.
How do we keep your information safe?
All information you provide to us is stored as securely as possible. All paper forms and correspondence are kept in locked filing cabinets on our premises. All electronic records are stored on our company hardware which requires password-protected authentication, or by reputable service providers using secure internet ‘cloud’ technology. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is never completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your information using industry-standard protocols and encryption, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to us via email, including forms completed on our website which are transmitted by email; any transmission is at your own risk.
Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access. Your identifiable personal information is kept separately from any session notes and other descriptive material. Client notes and other documentation are destroyed 3 months after the end of counselling.
Your Rights
You have the right to ask us to provide a copy of the information held by us in our records. You also have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information. If you would like to do this, please contact the Clinical Director using our contact form. You may withdraw your consent for us to hold and process your data at any time. However, if you do this while actively receiving counselling or psychotherapy would have to end. You can withdraw your consent by submitting our Consent Withdrawal Form, or by contacting the Clinical Director.
Changes to this policy
We may edit this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes we will notify you by posting a prominent announcement on our website.