Introduction
Q Counselling & Therapeutic Services comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, to protect clients' personal data. This policy notice tells you what personal information I hold about you, what I will do with it and your rights.

 

Data Controller is the term used to describe the person / organisation that collects, stores and has responsibility for your personal data. In this instance, the data controller is me, Shanta Allen.

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I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, registration number ZB661744.

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My email address is info@qcts.co.uk

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GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which. I am processing your data.

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If you have had counselling with me that has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

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If you are currently having counselling 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.

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GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called special category personal information. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is for the provision of health treatment (in this case counselling) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you).

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How I use your information

When you contact me with an enquiry, about my counselling services I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include:

• Your name.

• Email.

• Telephone number.

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If we proceed to an initial call, further information will be collated, such as:

• Address.

• GP details.

• History and related information.

• Medication.

• Brief session notes to help identify patterns and aid memory.

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If you decided not to proceed, I will ensure all of your data is deleted.

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Confidentiality

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Everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there is a significant risk of harm to yourself or others, at risk of harm from others and when I am legally required to do so by law. I will always try to speak with you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

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Your personal details are kept securely in a locked cabinet and/or on an encrypted device. I keep anonymised notes of each session, these are kept securely in a locked cabinet and/or on an encrypted device.

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After counselling has ended

Once our counselling has ended your records will be kept for 5 years, as required by my insurance, from the end of our contact with each other and are securely destroyed.

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Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access your data.

• Be informed how your data is stored and used

• Request corrections if your record is incorrect or incomplete

• To be forgotten - you can ask for your records to be deleted but please be aware that we may have to maintain basic information to fulfil our professional and legal requirements

• Withdraw consent for data processing

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

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For requests, contact Shanta Allen at info@qcts.co.uk

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Web cookies and data storage

Our company is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Wix.com provides us with the online platform that allows us to advertise our services to you. Your data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and the general Wix.com applications. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall.

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Wix uses cookies for many important reasons, such as:
•    To provide a great experience for visitors and customers.
•    To monitor and analyse the performance, operation and effectiveness of Wix's platform.
•    To ensure our platform is secure and safe to use.

 

For more information about how cookies are managed, please see the Wix web page where you can find further detail.

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We may use software tools to measure and collect session information, including page response times, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information, and methods used to browse away from the page.

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Changes to this policy

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We may update this policy periodically. The latest version will always be available on this website.