HKO Therapy Data Protection & Privacy Policy
Any personal data provided by you to the HKO Therapy through any means (verbal, written, in electronic form, 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 and to provide the services you have requested from me.
The operator of this website automatically gathers some anonymous information about visitors, including IP addresses, browser type, language, and the times and dates of webpage visits. The data collected does not include personally identifiable information and is used, for statistical analysis, to understand user behaviour, and to administer the site.
Introduction
At HKO Therapy I take the privacy of my clients and website users seriously. I will never share contact details with third parties without expressly obtaining your consent. Please read the following in order to learn more about our privacy policy and our information collection and use practices.
This policy only applies to data collected by HKO Therapy via its own forms and website. Third party agents, and websites which are linked to HKO Therapy, are not covered by this policy. If you have any queries concerning your personal information or any questions on the use of the information, please contact me using the contact form.
When you request therapy with HKO Therapy, or otherwise provide your personal details to me, you will be asked to consent to the processing of your data under the terms of this policy.
What information do I collect?
Therapy Requests– Registering with me to request access to therapy or counselling services can be done online, or via telephone. The request process involves providing me with your name, address, telephone numbers and email address. I may also request information on your availability, therapeutic issues, and other details which I deem relevant to processing your request.
Initial Assessment Appointments– At an initial appointment I ask about your current personal, social, medical and financial circumstances. I may also ask about your background and family history, as well as the issues which are affecting you now. I require this information so that I can decide about my offer of therapy to you.
Website – I 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.
What do I use your information for?
I use information held about you in the following ways:
To provide clients with a professional therapy service requested from me.
To notify you about changes to your appointments and other changes to my services.
To seek feedback from you on your experience of counselling with me.
To administer my service, including the arrangement of appointments, data analysis, research, statistical and survey purposes.
What information do I share?
I will not share any information about you with other organisations or people, except in the following situations:
Consent – HKO Therapy may share your information with professional carers or others whom you have requested or agreed we should contact.
Serious harm – HKO Therapy may share your information with the relevant authorities if I have reason to believe that this may prevent serious harm being caused to you or another person.
Compliance with law – HKO Therapy may share your information where there is a requirement to do so by law or by the regulations and other rules to which we are subject.
How do we keep your information safe?
All information you provide to me is stored as securely as possible. I do not keep any paper forms and correspondence. All electronic records are stored securely on a cloud server using the latest firewalls and data security protocols, and all access is by password-protected authentication.
Your rights
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 the Director using our contact form.
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 at the PF, your counselling would have to end. You can withdraw your consent by submitting our Consent Withdrawal Form, or by contacting the Director.
Cookies
Cookies are text files stored on your computer, and accessible only to the websites which create them. This website may from time to time use cookies and log files for statistical analysis, to understand user behaviour, to administer the site, to tailor the information presented to a user based on their preferences, and to improve user experience. Any information gathered by our use of cookies is compiled on an aggregate, anonymous basis.
We use Google Analytics which sets a cookie to gather anonymised data about the number of visitors to this site. Further information about Google’s privacy policy may be obtained from google.com/privacy.html.
Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, however you may delete, or disable cookies by following the instructions at allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/. Please note that you may not be able to take full advantage of a website if you disable cookies.
If you share content through social media, for example by liking on Facebook, following on Instagram and LinkedIn, those social networks will record that you have done so and may set a cookie for this purpose. In some cases, where a page on the website includes content from a social network, such as a Facebook comments box, those services I we cannot access those set by social networks, just as those social networks cannot access cookies set by me.
Changes to this policy
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.