Landeg-Jones Counselling (referred below as LJC) acknowledges that your privacy is very important. Any personal data provided by you to LJC through any means (verbal, written, in electronic form, or by your use of our website) will be held and processed 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 charity.
What information do we collect?
- Requesting support through LJC involved providing us with your name, telephone number and email address We may also request information on your availability, therapeutic issues, and other details which we deem relevant to processing your request.
- At an initial appointment we ask about your current personal, social, medical and financial circumstances. We may also ask about your background and family history, as well as the issues which are affecting you now. We require this information so that we can decide about our offer of counselling to you, to assign you to a counsellor, and to manage the service we provide to you.
- We use Google Analytics to collect anonymous data relating to user behaviour and ‘web traffic’ statistics. The collection and use of this data by Google Inc. is subject to their own Privacy Policies.
What do we use your information for?
- To provide clients with the professional counselling service requested from us.
- To enable us to offer appropriate opportunities and support to our counsellors.
- To offer suitable counselling appointments, and to allocate clients and counsellors for counselling.
- To notify you about changes to your appointments and other changes to our services.
- To seek feedback from you on your experience of counselling with us.
- To improve our service to ensure that it is provided in the most effective manner for you and for us.
- 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.
What information do we share?
We will not share any information about you with other organisations or people, except in the following situations:
- Consent – LJC may share your information with professional carers or others whom you have requested or agreed we should contact.
- Serious harm – The PF 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 – The PF may share your information where we are required to by law or by the regulations and other rules to which we are subject.
How do we keep your information safe?
- All information you provide to LJC is stored as securely as possible. All paper forms and correspondence are kept in a locked filling cabinet on our premises. All electronic records are stored securely by using password-protected authentication, using the latest firewall and data security protocols.
- 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 years 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 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 at the PF, your counselling would have to end. You can withdraw your consent by contacting the Director
Cookies
We do not use cookies to collect any personal information on our website, or to share your browsing behaviour with any third party except:
- Google Analytics – Like hundreds of thousands of websites you visit, we use Google Analytics to collect generic, anonymous data from all visitors to monitor how our website is used. This data is shared with Google in return for the service they provide.
- Cookie Notice – Ironically, the law requires that you receive a notification about our use of cookies, and so we have to use another set of cookies specifically and only to collect the information that you have seen this notice and agreed to it.
Changes in 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.
v1.0 July 2022