• Counselling Requests– Registering with us to request access to our counselling 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 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, assign you to a counsellor, and manage the service we provide to you.

• Website – 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. are subject to their Privacy Policies.

• Other Forms – The information you give us on our forms (including all enquiry and application forms) may include your name, postal address, email address, phone number and other messages to us.

• Comments—When you leave a comment on the Service, we collect and store the data entered in the comments form. We also your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. 

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Embedded content from other websites

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Articles on this Service may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, and such like). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. We have no control over the way third-party sites collect or use your data.

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 opportunities and support to our counsellors, receptionists and other volunteers.

• 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 most effectively for you and us.

• To administer our service, including the arrangement of appointments, the handling of donations, and for financial control, data analysis, research, statistical and survey purposes.

• To keep in touch with those who consent to this, for organisational, service and professional development.

We will not share any information about you with other organisations or people, except in the following situations:

• Consent – Deborah Giannasi Counselling may share your information with professional carers or others whom you have requested or agreed we should contact.

• Serious harm – Deborah Giannasi Counselling may share your information with the relevant authorities if we have reason to believe that this may prevent serious harm from being caused to you or another person. This will also be discussed and consented to in the case of parents agreeing to counselling sessions for children under safeguarding guidelines.

• Compliance with law – Deborah Giannasi Counselling 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.

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 securely on a cloud server using the latest firewalls and data security protocols, and all access is by password-protected authentication, or by our IT service provider using secure 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 7 years after the end of counselling. In the case of any child protection and safeguarding escalations files will be kept securely until the child turns 25, as per NSPCC guidelines. 

 

Clients’ written and art work

 

We provide secure storage for art and craft work which clients produce during face-to-face therapy sessions. At the end of therapy, you can decide whether to take your work home or whether you would prefer us to destroy it for you.If we lose contact with a client before the planned end of their therapy, we will store artwork for up to three months, during which time you can arrange to come and collect it from the centre. After three months any work which has not been collected will be disposed of securely.

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 us.

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 Deborah Giannasi Counselling, your counselling would have to end. You can withdraw your consent by getting in touch.

Cookies

 

Cookies are small text files used to store information on your device as you use a website. We use them to:

• make the site work correctly

• store your settings and preferences

• provide a customised user experience

• help us understand who uses our site and they use it

• decide which pages are useful and which need improvement

 

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 – 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.

 

You can find out more about cookies here find out more on how to manage and delete cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

 

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.

V2 14th July 2021