GDPR/Privacy Policy
Sue Egan Psychology (referred to as ‘I’ hereafter) is committed to ensuring your privacy is protected at all times.
Personal information I collect
I am collecting your contact details (phone number, email address, address and GP information) and psychological notes (brief notes of sessions, summaries and formulations) in order to deliver personal therapy.
Session confidentiality
The following is a very important aspect of our work together. Everything that is discussed in the counselling session is kept in the strictest confidence. Examples of the exceptional circumstances when information would be shared to the relevant authorities are:
- where disclosure is made at your request or with your consent
- where we are legally required to do so
- where we believe that someone, especially a child or vulnerable adult is at risk of harm
- where we believe you are at risk of harm. However, I will aim to discuss any action with you first and seek to gain your co-operation.
- where disclosure is permitted by law and required to protect our interest.
My supervision
I seek a monthly consultation with another therapist qualified in this process. The consultation process is for my practice (rather than seeking instruction on working with you). In order to protect your privacy, my consultant will not know you personally nor professionally. I will refer to you by your first name, and I may refer to your information verbally when it’s helpful to my professional processes.
Therapeutic will
Your name and contact details will be shared with my Therapeutic Executor. This is so that you will be contacted on the event of my death, should you still be in therapy with me.
What data is stored
- Email:your email address and correspondence will be stored in my email account (currently GMail) by nature of you contacting me.
- Website:none of your personal information is stored on my website, other than to momentarily collect & send it to my Gmail account for the purposes of our initial contact, after which is automatically erased.
- Psychology Today: if you contacted me via psychology today, please refer to their privacy policy for more information. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/privacy-policy
- Documents Held (in paper form or as electronic documents):
Contact Details
Contract/Agreement
GDPR Agreement
Brief Session Notes
Client Code (linking documents)
Formulations/summary documents
A note about GMail (Outlook etc) and Electronic Messaging Systems – free electronic email & messaging services (Gmail, Outlook, Facebook, WhatsApp etc) regularly read incoming & outgoing messages electronically. One of the reasons for this is that the service gains knowledge about the messaging user for the purposes of selling advertising to other companies. To put it plainly: if you email me about the topic of, say, your sexuality using your GMail address it’s very likely sexuality will be associated with your email account… which will possibly attract associated advertising topics wherever you’re logged in with that same account (eg Google.com).
Best advice I can give is (a) to read the terms of service your free messaging provider and (b) to be cautious in what information you include when communicating electronically.
Security and disposal
I am committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, I have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information I collect online.
I will store your details both on a password protected document on my computer and with paper notes locked in a filing cabinet. I will store it whilst therapy is ongoing. After therapy ends, I will destroy the contact details immediately as confidential waste. The session notes (including any formulations and summaries) will be stored as above for 3 years, after which point it will be disposed of as confidential waste.
Your rights
You have the following rights:
- To be informed what information I hold (i.e. this document).
- To see the information I hold about you (free of charge for the initial request).
- To rectify any inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
- To withdraw consent to me using your personal information.
- To request your personal information be erased (though I can decline whilst the information is needed for me to practice lawfully & competently).
If you wish to remove your agreement to my use of your data at any point please let me know by email: sue@sueeganpsychology.com
If you have any concerns about how I have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioners Office.