Any personal data provided by you to Thriving Young Minds through any means (verbal, written, electronically or by your use of our website) will be held and processed in accordance with the data protection principles set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 and the General Data Protection Regulation for the purposes for which you have given consent, to provide the services you have requested from us.
Thriving Young Minds is committed to protecting your privacy. Please read the following in order to learn more about our privacy policy, information collection and use practices.
This policy only applies to data collected by Thriving Young Minds via our own forms and website. If you have any queries concerning your personal information or any questions on our use of the information, please contact us.
When you request services from Thriving Young Minds, or otherwise provide your personal details to us, you are consenting to the processing of your data under the terms of this policy.
Counselling Requests – requesting access to our counselling service can be done online, through social media, email or by phone. Our request process involves providing us with your name, the name of the client (if different), their age and contact details. We may also request information on your availability, therapeutic issues and other details which we deem relevant to processing your request.
Initial Assessment Appointments – At an initial assessment appointment we ask about your current personal, social and medical circumstances. We may also ask about your background and family history, as well as the issues which are affecting you now. We also assess whether the client is currently presenting any risk. We require this information so that we can decide about our offer of counselling to you, to assign you to a counsellor, and to manage the service we provide to you.
Website – We use Google Analytics to collect anonymous data relating to user behaviour and ‘web traffic’ statistics. The collection and use of this data by Google Inc. is subject to their own Privacy Policies.
Other Forms – The information you give us on our contact forms may include your name, email address, phone number and other messages to us. This is to allow us to make contact with you.
We use information held about you in the following ways:
To provide clients with the professional counselling service requested from us.
To offer suitable counselling appointments and to allocate clients and counsellors.
To notify you about changes to your appointments and other changes to our services.
To seek feedback from you on your experience of counselling with us.
To improve our service to ensure that it is provided in the most effective manner for you and for us.
To administer our service, including the arrangement of appointments, for financial control and data analysis.
To keep in touch with those who consent to this, for the purposes of organisational, service and professional development.
What information do we share?
We will not share any information about you with other organisations or people, except in the following situations:
Consent – We may share client information with family, education professionals or medical professionals at the request of the client only when given fully informed consent.
Serious harm – We may share your information with the relevant authorities if we have reason to believe that this may prevent serious harm being caused to you or another person.
Compliance with law – We may share your information where we are required to by law or by the regulations and other rules to which we are subject.
In all circumstances we will communicate this with the client/parent or carer wherever possible.
All information you provide to us is stored as securely as possible. All paper forms and correspondence are kept in locked filing cabinets. All electronic records are stored in secure files, all access to which requires password-protected authentication.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is never completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to us via email, including forms completed on our website which are transmitted by email; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.
Your identifiable personal information is kept separately from any session notes and other descriptive material. Client notes and other documentation are destroyed six years after the end of counselling.
You have the right to ask us to provide a copy of the information held by us in our records. You also have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information. If you would like to do this, please contact us.
You may withdraw your consent for us to hold and process your data at any time. However, if you do this while actively receiving counselling, your counselling would have to end. You can withdraw your consent by submitting a request in writing.
We do not use cookies to collect any personal information on our website, or to share your browsing behaviour with any third party except:
Google Analytics – Like other websites you visit, we use Google Analytics to collect generic, anonymous data from all visitors to monitor how our website is used. This data is shared with Google in return for the service they provide.
We may edit this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes we will notify you by posting a prominent announcement on our website.
