Privacy Policy

Effective date: 1st of January, 2024

Our contact details

Name: JS Therapy, Counselling and Wellbeing Ltd

Phone number: 07508 477603

Email: admin@js-therapy.co.uk

Your privacy is very important to us and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given. We adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

This privacy notice tells you what we will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended, including:

  • Why we are able to process your information and its purpose
  • Whether you have to provide it
  • How long it is stored for
  • Whether there are other recipients of your personal information
  • Your data protection rights.

The lawful basis for holding and using your personal information

The GDPR states that we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which we are processing your data. These are explained below:

If you have had therapy with JS therapy counselling & Wellbeing Ltd and it has now ended, we will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with our service to consider therapy, we will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.

The GDPR also makes sure that we look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case counselling) and Date: 09/01/2025 necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between your therapist and you).

How your information is used

Initial contact. When you contact JS Therapy Counselling and Wellbeing Ltd with a counselling services enquiry, information is collected to assist in the satisfaction of your enquiry. This will include name, contact details, age, next of kin and doctors details. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send your details when making a referral, a parent or trusted individual may also share your details when making an enquiry on your behalf.

If you decide not to proceed, your personal data is deleted within 28 days. If you would like it deleted sooner, please say.

While you are accessing counselling. Rest assured that everything you discuss is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if:

  • Your therapist is required to report any concerns they may have about the safety of a child or vulnerable adult to the appropriate agency; however, we would always endeavour to inform you of this disclosure first.
  • Your therapist believes you will cause serious physical harm to yourself, including self-harm and if this was not disclosed on assessment. We will be unable to retain confidentiality and will be forced to inform my supervisor, your doctor and, depending on the circumstances, the police.
  • Confidentiality would also be broken in the event of threats of terrorism, animal harm or money laundering.

Your therapist will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd is committed to offering good and safe practices, by adhering to the BACP Ethical Framework.

Your therapist will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely and are not shared with any third party. Written notes of each session, are kept in written form in a notebook which is kept securely.

For security reasons text messages are not retained from clients for more than 28 days. If relevant information is contained in a text message these will be copied to notes and subsequently deleted. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 28 days, if it is not important. If necessary, anything that is important will be transferred to a coded file.

After counselling has ended - once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 5 years from: the end of our contact with each other, or from your 18th birthday if the counselling was before that. They will then be securely destroyed. If you want your information deleted sooner than this, please ask.

Third party receipts of personal data

In the unlikely situation that your personal data may have to be shared with third parties, for example, where JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd has contracted with a supplier to carry out specific tasks (in such cases we have carefully selected which partners we work with). JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd takes great care to ensure that we have a contract with the third party that states what they are allowed to do with the data shared with them. We act to ensure that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted.

For example, this could include professional advisers JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd is affiliated to, other healthcare professionals and/or your regulators (for example HMRC, Companies House or the ICO).

Your rights

JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd will try to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how we use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd holds about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

If JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd do hold information about you we will:

  • give you a description of it and where it came from;
  • tell you why I am holding it, tell you how long your data will be stored and how this decision is made;
  • tell you who it could be disclosed to;
  • let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You can also ask at any time to correct any mistakes that there may be in the personal information held about you. To make a request for any personal information held, please put the request in writing addressing it to admin@js-therapy.co.uk.

If you have any complaint about how JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd would welcome any suggestions for improving our data protection procedures. If you want to make a formal complaint about the way JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Data security

JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd take the security of the data held about you very seriously and as such take every effort to make sure it is kept secure by using anonymised and minimal notes, encrypted devices, and a locked filing cabinet.

‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/ organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is me.

JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The type of personal information we collect

JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd currently collect and process the following information:

  • Personal identifiers, contacts and characteristics (for example, name and contact details, next of kin and doctors name)
  • I make brief process notes only after each session; this helps me monitor my work. You will not be identified from these records; they are securely stored.

JS Therapy Counselling & Wellbeing Ltd is also happy to answer any questions you may have about our data protection or Privacy Policy. Please contact us at: admin@js-therapy.co.uk

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at:

Name: JS Therapy, Counselling and Wellbeing Ltd

Phone number: 07508 477603

Email: admin@js-therapy.co.uk

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk