Pathfinders Therapy
Privacy Policy

This policy covers personal client data held by Pathfinders Therapy. Our Website Cookies & Privacy Policy can be found at this link:

Your privacy is very important to me and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. 

I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. 

As a solo practitioner, I am the ‘Data Controller’ (the person who determines the purposes for which any personal data is processed, and the way in which this will be done) for my business. ‘Processing’ your data means obtaining, collecting, and holding your personal data (e.g. name, email, phone number) or sensitive personal data (e.g. physical and mental health information).

For full details of my data management systems, a copy of my Data protection – principles, policy and procedures document is available on request.

This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information. I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy - you can contact me via email on laura@pathfinderstherapy.com.

What personal data do I process and how do I do this?

Personal data is information about an individual who can be identified from that data.  As part of our counselling relationship, I will process personal data about you. This can be in the following forms:

contact details (e.g. name, email address)

session notes (e.g. physical and mental health details, family history)

reports

letters and e-mails

other such written material gathered during the period of assessment and therapy.

Your personal data may be processed using hard copy, electronically, or verbally. Where data is processed electronically, effort will be made to ensure the safe and secure processing of the data. Sensitive personal data (e.g. session notes) is encrypted by password.

My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information

I process personal data to establish, develop, and maintain our therapeutic relationship, to comply with UK law, and to keep appropriate records and accounts. 

I seek explicit consent from you to do this – as part of our contracting in our initial session, and via this privacy notice.

If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.

I meet my obligations under the GDPR by:

keeping personal data up to date

storing and destroying it securely

not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data

protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, and disclosure

ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data.

How I use your information

  • Initial contact. 

When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include name and preferred contact details. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send me your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf. If you decide not to proceed I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one month. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know. 

  • While you are accessing counselling. 

Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal or ethical obligations to disclose, for example, if you disclose abuse/neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires me to disclose information. In the event that confidentiality must be broken I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this. 

I keep brief notes of our therapy sessions for the purpose of assisting our work together. The notes help me to keep track of the issues that we are working on and they are for my use only. The notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and they are stored securely in a locked filing cabinet that only I have access to. Your therapy notes are stored separately to your personal details form. 

Counsellors are required to have regular supervision support so I may discuss our work with my supervisor. This would be done without identifying you and my supervisor is a counsellor who also abides by the BACP’s code of ethics regarding confidentiality.

  • After counselling has ended. 

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for seven years from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please contact me to discuss.

Your rights 

I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances.

 You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

 If I do hold information about you I will: 

• give you a description of it and where it came from; 

• tell you why I am holding its, tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision; • tell you who it could be disclosed to; 

• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form. You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. 

To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to laura@pathfinderstherapy.com

If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. 

If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint