My Life Counselling is committed to protecting andrespecting the privacy of both our clients and suppliers.This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data wecollect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Pleaseread the following carefully to understand our views and practices regardingyour data and how we will treat it, so you feel confident providing us with theinformation when you use our services, or when you are communicating with us.My Life Counselling adheres to current data protectionlegislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679)(the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and ElectronicCommunications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. We also adhere to the ethicalguidelines regarding protecting client privacy and confidentiality set by theBritish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and abide by theBACP’s code of ethics.Who Are We?My Life Counselling is a limited company incorporated inEngland and Wales and are “controllers” and responsible for your personal data,and are referred to as “we”, “us”, or “our” in this privacy policy.Information We May Collect From YouPersonal data, or personal information, means anyinformation about an individual from which that person can be identified. Itdoes not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).We may collect, use, store and process different types ofpersonal data about you which we have grouped together as follows: Identity Data includes first name, last name, title, date of birth, and gender. Contact Data email address, telephone numbers, and website URL. Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us. Technical Data includes internet protocol address, your login data, your browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our site. Profile Data includes your purchases made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses. Usage Data includes information about how you use our services.We collect information about your health ina confidential manner in order to provide our counselling services to you. How Is Your Personal Data Collected?We use different methods to collect data from you and aboutyou including through: Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data when you complete forms at our practice or via our website mylifecounsellinguk.com and complete our hard copy forms, or by any other means. you report a problem with our site. Apply for our services. Give us some feedback.Third parties or publicly available sources. Wemay receive personal data about you from various third parties and oursuppliers. Uses Made of the Information You Provide UsWe only use your personal data when the law allows us to.Most commonly, we use information held about you in the following ways: To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us. To notify you about changes to our services.Under no circumstances will we pass your details on tothird parties for marketing purposes..Change of PurposeIf we need to use your personal data for an unrelatedpurpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows usto do so.Please note that we may process your personal data withoutyour knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this isrequired or permitted by law. Confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal orethical obligations to disclose, for example, if you disclose abuse/neglect ofa child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm toyourself or others, or if a court of law requires us to disclose information.
In the event that confidentiality must be broken we will always try to speak toyou about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
Counsellors are required to have regular supervision support so we may discussour work with our supervisors. This would be done without identifying you and oursupervisors are a counsellor who also abides by the BACP’s code of ethicsregarding confidentiality.Disclosure of Your InformationWe may have to share your personal data with third partiesin the following circumstances: We may disclose your personal information to third parties or to our suppliers, or by law, where necessary. If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction. We require all members of staff and any third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. SecurityMy Life Counselling ensures all reasonable and appropriatesteps are taken to protect the security and integrity of the personalinformation you provide to us via our site, or by any other means electronic orotherwise.We will protect any personal information provided to us byyou from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in unauthorised way, alteredor disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to thoseemployees, consultants, agents, contractors and other third parties who have abusiness need to know. They will only process your personal data on ourinstructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.The security measures we undertake include electronicfirewall and other protection procedures involving virus scanning, securitypatches, vulnerability testing, backup and recovery planning, employeetraining, security audits and other steps designed to secure your data.Unfortunately, the transmission of information via theinternet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect yourpersonal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to oursite; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received yourinformation, we will use strict procedures and security features to try toprevent unauthorised access.We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspectedpersonal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of abreach where we are legally required to do so. Length of StorageAdhering to the BACP guidelines, we are required to keeprecords for seven years after therapy has ended. For example, in the case offinancial transactions personal information must be retained for as long aslegally required in respect of legal, reporting or accounting purposes.Retaining your therapy notes ensures that we can continue to offer you anefficient service if you make contact after therapy has ended. Your therapynotes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify youand continue to be stored in a secure encrypted system that only I have accessto for seven years after therapy has ended. This time frame adheres withcurrent industry guidelines. Seven years after therapy has ended your therapynotes will be confidentially destroyed.
Your personal details form is confidentially destroyed on ending your therapysessions. Your RightsUnder certain circumstances, you have rights under dataprotection laws in relation to your personal data.You have the right to: Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. Request correction of the personal data we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us. Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.Data security
We take the security of the data that we hold about you seriously. Emailaccounts are password protected with 2 factor authentication, and mobile phonesand laptops used to respond to your emails are password protected and haveanti-virus software. Queries
‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person or organisation thatcollects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In thisinstance, the data controller is Deshara Pariag and I am registered with theInformation Commissioner’s Office (ICO)- reference ZB620615. If you have anyquestions about this privacy policy or the way in which I handle your personalinformation you can contact me via email at mylifecounselling@gmail.com.Changes to Our Privacy PolicyAny changes we may make to our privacy policy in the futurewill be posted on this page.