Private practice - privacy statement

This statement explains how I use and protect any personal information that you give to me when you have professional support from me in my private practice. The procedures described are effective from 8^th May 2018 and have been altered in line with data protection legislation becoming effective on 25^th May 2018. Please signal on our working agreement your consent to my use of your personal information as described here.

I commit to ensuring that your privacy is protected.

The contact data I hold about you, i.e. your telephone and/or email address, are only kept for communicating with you in response to initial enquiries or about appointments. I will not contact you for any other reason. I will not share this data with anyone. My phone and email accounts are password protected.

The appointment data I hold, i.e. your code name (a pseudonym) against a day and time in my diary, a note to indicate whether you attended and another to indicate whether you paid, are used to manage my working day and as the basis for my accounting records. Individual clients and supervisees cannot be identified in my diary or in my accounting records.

I consider contact data and appointment data to be basic records which I keep for 3 years and then destroy securely.

My therapy and supervision notes (which are on paper, not on the computer) are limited to the answers you gave in my original assessment at the beginning of our work together, and the occasional reminders to myself of subjects covered or that need to be covered. I keep these notes for the duration of therapy as an aide memoire and so that I can check that the work is progressing toward your stated goals. I keep them for 3 years after therapy in case you want to re-engage. After that, there is no need or legal obligation for me to keep them and so I destroy them securely. Any notes I take in relation to my own supervision do not identify clients or supervisees.

All information from which you can be identified, including your ‘signed’ working agreement is kept in a locked metal cabinet.

You have the right to ask to see the information I hold about you and change anything that is incorrect. You have the right to ask me to delete any information I hold about you, which I will do apart from that which I need for my business accounting and tax purposes.

If you wish to complain about how I handle your data, I ask that you speak to me (the “data controller”, Gill Sweeting) first. If I cannot resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/ or on 0303 123 1113.