Privacy Policy

Inner Balance Psychology understands how important your privacy is. We take care to maintain your confidentiality in accordance with current data protection laws (GDPR, 2018) and the ethical guidelines of the HCPC and British Psychological Society (BPS). These guidelines have been set up to protect your confidential material and ensure that your therapist always conducts themselves with professionalism and integrity.

In order to provide you with the best service possible, Inner Balance Psychology will hold your personal contact details and records of your therapy sessions. Please find below important information about how this information will be held and used.

How I might collect your data:

I collect your data in different ways that may include, but are not limited to:

  • When you write to me about any subject by any means;
  • When you enquire about my services but do not engage;
  • When you attend an appointment;
  • When you complete questionnaires.
  • When you access or engage with our website.

I collect personal data in order to deliver my services. The data collected is most likely in electronic format but can also be in paper form.

For your security, we use all appropriate organisational and technical security controls to safeguard your data.

Your personal information

At the point of booking your initial consultation, you will be asked for your personal contact information, for example, your name, address, email address and telephone number and you may also choose to share details of the issues you are looking for help with.

Your contact information is stored securely in a password-protected database on a secure computer that can only be accessed by your therapist.

In order to be able to fulfil our duty of care to you, prior to your initial consultation or first treatment session, we will ask you for contact information for your GP and elected Emergency Contact person. These details will be stored securely in a password-protected database on a secure computer and will only be accessible to your therapist.

This personal information will be held for the duration of your therapy after which it will be deleted from our database.

Please note that Inner Balance Psychology will need to keep a record of your name and client reference number for seven years after the end of your therapy, so that we can respond effectively to any potential requests regarding your clinical notes and treatment.

Inner Balance Psychology will never pass on your contact details to any third-party organisations for the purposes of sales, marketing or research and will never use your personal data for any purposes other than the administration of the psychology service we are providing to you including to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments and collect payment for sessions.

Your payment details

When you pay through BACS transfer only your name, the date of the payment and the amount are recorded.

Anonymised payment details are recorded in our financial income reports. These reports will only hold your first name, last name initial and unique client reference number. The HMRC requires that we retain this information for 5 years after the end of the financial year.

Your therapy sessions

Everything that you discuss with your therapist is confidential. Confidentiality will only be broken if there is concern about your safety or the safety of someone else or if we are instructed to do so by a Court of Law. Your therapist will always endeavour to speak to you about this first.

During remote working, your therapist will ensure that they are conducting online and telephone sessions in a quiet, private and confidential setting. We have selected video calling platforms that offer end-to-end encryption to ensure maximum privacy. Please note however that we cannot be held responsible for any breaches that occur due to failures in this technology.

Your therapist discusses their clinical work with a supervisor. This is to ensure that they are offering you the best service possible. These conversations are bound by confidentiality and you will only be referred to by your first name.

Your therapist will also keep notes of each session. These are anonymised and are stored within a password-protected file on your therapist’s secure computer system. These notes are for your therapist’s use only and help to keep a track of everything that is being discussed. In line with industry guidelines, these notes will be kept securely for up to seven years after your therapy comes to an end. After this time, they will be confidentially destroyed.

If your sessions are paid for or arranged via a third party, (e.g. your employer, a friend, or a family member), other than payment requests, invoices or receipts your counselling information will be kept private. Details about what is discussed in your sessions will remain confidential between you and your therapist. Any other information can only be shared if you provide your written consent.

Your communications with us

All of our email accounts are password protected. If you send an email to your therapist’s email address, only they will have access to it.

All phones, tablets and laptops used to respond to your emails are encrypted, fully protected with anti-virus software and password protected.

Data Usage

Inner Balance Psychology will only use your email address and telephone number to contact you about your appointments. Your therapist may also contact you directly via email in order to share information with you that is pertinent to your therapeutic process.

Your rights

Any personal data retained by our service is kept in accordance with the GDPR, 2018.

Under these guidelines, you have the following rights

The right to request access to your data

You can request to view the information that we hold about you (contact details, appointment logs etc.) at any time. If during therapy you would like to see your session notes, please make this request to your therapist directly. Should you require a copy of your notes after your therapy has come to an end you can make this request by emailing info@inner-balance.co.uk or calling 07546289790.

The right of rectification

At any point during your time using our service or during the seven years thereafter, while we retain your records, you have the right to request amendments to your contact details or session notes. This right can be exercised either by speaking directly to your therapist or by contacting us in writing.

The right to be forgotten

You can request that we delete and confidentially destroy the information that we hold about you and your sessions at any time. This request can be made by contacting us at info@inner-balance.co.uk

Instances where we would not be able to comply with your request are as follows:

a) It is necessary for us to retain these records in order to continue providing an effective service

b) We are compelled to retain these records by a Court of Law

c) We require these records in order to establish, exercise or defend legal claims

Breaches of data protection

In the event of any breach of our data protection policies, we will notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours and will seek to rectify this immediately.

Raising concerns

Should you have any concerns about our data protection practices, you can raise these directly with your therapist. You can also notify the Information Commissioner’s Office. We are registered with ICO under the reference number C1312291.

Visitors to my website

When someone visits the Inner Balance Psychology website, a third-party service is used, google analytics to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. I do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make and do not allow Google Analytics to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website. We use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit our website.

We use google analytics so that we can continually improve the service to you, You can read Google Analytics privacy notice here https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB .

Inner Balance Psychology uses Word Press as the content management system for our website – find out about Word Press and data protection https://en-gb.wordpress.org/about/privacy/ . Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently – find out about our use of cookies. https://en-gb.wordpress.org/about/privacy/cookies/ No user-specific data is collected by us or any third party. If you fill in a form on the website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to us.