GDPR Privacy Policy

Accessible Counselling Tullamore (ACT) Privacy Statement

Accessible Counselling Tullamore (ACT) (‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our’) gather and process your personal information in accordance with the relevant Data Protection legislation and other, applicable laws.

We process your personal information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our services.

We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and will not process your information in any way, other than as specified.

We take your privacy very seriously and will never disclose your data to another organisation without your consent, unless required to do so by law.

We only retain your data for as long as is necessary and for the purpose(s) specified in our privacy policy.

We take every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your personal data, including several layers of security measures, in order to prevent unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction.

We only ever retain personal information for as long as is necessary and we have strict review and retention policies in place to meet these obligations.

Guide to Accessible Counselling Tullamore’s Privacy Policy

Accessible Counselling Tullamore (ACT)  has stated mission to support people in the community maintaining positive mental health.  ACT promotes and supports positive mental health by providing effective and accessible Counselling and Psychotherapy services.  ACT seeks to proactively work towards resolving issues that cause a decline of the mental well-being of people within our community through support and educational programmes.  In fostering high standards and good practice in the delivery of mental health services aimed at supporting personal growth, wellbeing and integrating all aspects of human experience, we may need to process your personal data while you are receiving care at our centre.

For the purpose of this Guide to the privacy policy:

• “Personal Data” is information from which you (or another person) are identifiable or which relates to you;

• “Processing” refers to any use of your Personal Data including its collection, disclosure, retention and storage.

This Guide summarises when, how and why your Personal Data will be processed as a client when attending our services.  ACT takes appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality of your Personal Data.  We have summarised how we use your Personal Data below.

Legal justification for our use of Personal Data

To comply with the law, we need to tell you the legal justification we rely on for using your Personal Data.

ACT has a statutory function “to promote, encourage and foster the establishment and maintenance of high standards and good practices in the delivery of mental health services and to take all reasonable steps to protect the interests of our clients”.

Justification for Processing Personal Data

We process your Personal Data in order to perform our statutory functions, comply with our legal obligations and to allow us perform tasks which are in the public interest.

Retention of Personal Data

Your Personal Data will only be kept for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which we collect it or by reference to any legal obligations. In all cases, Personal Data may be retained for a longer period where required in the context of an ongoing legal obligation, claim or legal proceedings.

Our current policy is to keep any records of your Personal Data for 7 years. Governing agencies for counselling practitioners’ recommends that, in the absence of a superseding requirement, Counsellors/Therapists retain records for a period of 7 years after the last date of service delivery. Records for children and young people should be retained until the client is 25 (or 26 if they are 17 when therapy sessions end) or 8 years after their death, if sooner.

Client Notes and Record Keeping

• Our policy is to keep minimum notes and records. The information we store may include particulars such as:
• Personal information – name, date of birth, address, contact details etc;
• Background information that might be relevant to the counselling process;
• Your signed contract with us;
• Confidential case notes (describing the main focus of the session with any important information);
• Information for service evaluation and statistical purposes.

Records and Data Protection:

Client records may be held physically or may be kept in electronic format, under encryption. All Data Protection legislation will be complied with in accordance with current regulations. At the first session a client intake form will generally be completed giving relevant background information about the client; it may include information pertaining to medical conditions; substance dependencies; noting previous experience of counselling; G.P. details, and client contact details.  Brief session notes will be created by the therapist post sessions and retained again physically in a locked cabinet.  All records relating to a client will be erased from ACT’s  computer after a period of 7 years from the date of the last meeting or as stated under the guidelines stated under the heading ‘Retention of Personal Data’.

Personal Data Rights

You are afforded particular rights in relation to the processing of your Personal Data which may be limited by circumstance or legal exemptions.

These rights include the following:

1. a) Right to access a copy of your Personal Data;
2. b) Right to rectify any inaccurate Personal Data;
3. c) Right to erase Personal Data, for example, when we no longer need to retain it;
4. d) Right to restrict or suspend your use of Personal Data as part of any objection to or challenge of its use; and
5. e) Right to complain to the Data Protection Commission about our use of your Personal Data.

Who to contact about your Personal Data

If you have any questions or concerns about the way your Personal Data is used by us, you can contact us by e-mail at: actullamore@gmail.com