Privacy Policy

This website is owned and operated by Registered Psychotherapist & Counsellor, Mr Andrew W Davidson. Visitors to this website are bound by the following terms about privacy.

Disclaimer

Nothing found on my website is intended to be a substitute for professional psychological, psychiatric or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or mental disorder. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on our site. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 999 immediately.

This website contains material which may include text, moving images,  photographs and other images and sound, which are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright and other intellectual property rights in this material are either owned by Andrew W Davidson or have been licensed to it by the owner(s) of those rights. You may not: broadcast, copy or distribute,  alter or tamper with in any way or otherwise use any written, visual or recorded information and other material contained in this website unless clearly stating the original source and with prior written permission. These restrictions apply to all or part of the content on this website.  You must not remove any copyright, trademark or other intellectual property notices contained in the original material from any material copied or printed off from this website; link to this website; assume logo or branding or name without my express written consent.

My website may contain links to other third-party websites, which does not mean I endorse or approve of their products, services or views.

Some of the articles on this site contain links to products, apps, and services. Please note, I only recommend products or services that I personally use or believe will be helpful to my readers.

This privacy policy applies only to Andrew W Davidson’s website and I would ask you to read the privacy policy and notices of any other websites you visit via links from my website.

Notice about privacy

Privacy is important to me, and I am committed to ensuring your privacy is protected. Therefore, I have outlined below in this privacy policy areas that adhere to the BACP and COSRT Professional Codes of Conduct and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679.  Adhering to both the Professional Codes of Conduct and the GDPR means I should outline my position regarding the terms of the counselling or psychotherapy I offer you and the information I gather and hold about you. I can reassure you, any information provided by you will follow the terms and conditions outlined below and the General Data Protection Regulation.

I reserve the right to change this policy at any time. However, I will not change the way I use your personal information without telling you in advance and give you the chance to opt-out of or prevent the new use of your information.

Marketing Permissions

If you have signed up for the newsletter on this website, you are consenting for me to email information about my blogs, articles, events, workshops and courses. I will not give any personal details to any third party. However, I do use MailChimp as my marketing automation platform. By signing up for my newsletter, this is an acknowledgement that the information provided can be transferred to MailChimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms. To stop receiving my newsletter at any time, click the unsubscribe link in the footer of any newsletter email received from me. I will treat any information provided with respect and in line with these terms and conditions outlined below.

I do not contact patients who use my clinical services for marketing purposes unless they sign-up to receive my newsletter via this website.  When the patient ends therapy, they have the option to be contacted by me to give feedback to help me develop my clinical services.  I will only contact the patient who attends my clinical service regarding service development if the patient has given their consent.

How I use cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on a computer’s hard drive.  This website uses traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps me analyse data about web page traffic to improve this website. This information is only used for statistical analysis purposes.

The cookies I use are:

What information I will collect about you

I collect information about you when you register for one of my services. I also receive information when you sign up for one of my free resources, blog, provide feedback, request an appointment or supply me with information during the course of our relationship. Website usage information is collected using cookies.

When you book an appointment with me I use a contact form plugin to collect personal data when someone submits information from a contact form. I also use Calendly and Power Diary to schedule appointments. The information you enter when scheduling an initial appointment is in line with this privacy policy, Calendly’s privacy policy and Power Diary’s privacy policy.

I may process certain types of personal data about you as follows:

• Identity Data may include your first name, last name, username, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data may include your billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Transaction Data may include details about payments between me and other information about purchases made by you.
• Usage Data may include information about how you use my website, products and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from me.

Sensitive Data

I may request to collect sensitive data about you in order to provide therapy services and/or carry out surveys. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation and information about your health. Depending on the purpose, I may require your explicit consent for processing sensitive data, if so I will send you a further communication asking for you to confirm your consent to this processing. See more information about the Clinical Terms and Conditions how I use sensitive clinical data.

Where I am required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between you and me, if you do not provide me with that data when requested, I may not be able to contract any therapeutic service for you. If you don’t provide me with the required information, I may have to cancel the therapeutic service you have requested, but if I do, I will notify you at the time.

How I collect your personal information

I only collect data about you through direct interactions. For example, you may provide data by filling in forms on my site (or otherwise) or by communicating with me by post, phone, email or otherwise, including when you:

• order a product or service;
• subscribe to a service or publication;
• request resources or marketing to be sent to you;
• give me feedback.

How will I use your personal information

I will only use your personal data when legally permitted. The most common uses of your personal data are:

• To produce the contract between us.
• When I need to comply with legal or regulatory responsibility.

Data Retention

I will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes I collected it for, including to satisfy any legal or marketing requirement.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, I consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which I process your personal data and whether I can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

By law, I have to keep basic information about my patients (including contact, identity, financial and transaction data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask me to delete your data: see below for further information.

In some circumstances, I may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case I may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Facebook Comments

I have embedded a Facebook Comments plugin to allow you to leave a comment on my website using your Facebook account. This plugin may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the commenting interface, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the interface (such as “liking” someone’s comment, replying to other comments), if you are logged into Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:

• Request access to your personal data.
• Request correction of your personal data.
• Request erasure of your personal data.
• Object to the processing of your personal data.
• Request restriction of processing your personal data.
• Request transfer of your personal data.
• Right to withdraw consent.

You can see more about these rights at:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data. However, I may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, I may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

I may need to request specific information from you to help me confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. I may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up my response.

If you attended one of my therapeutic services together with your partner, I would only be able to give information that identifies the person requesting the subject access request and not your partner. If the patient attended therapy together with their partner, I will not disclose any information to any party as I will need consent from both parties before I release any information. I will also not share any information to third parties unless there is a need to breach confidentiality due to a criminal act or limitations of confidentiality as outlined above. I will also not give any information if requested from a solicitor, lawyer or barrister other than dates of attendance, even if consent is given. My clinical case notes will remain confidential.  If you require information that identifies those attending the sessions, I will need written consent from those parties, including the information requested and their permission to release this information. If your request for my clinical notes is for a court proceeding, I will not release this information due to the confidential nature of the sessions.

I try to respond to all legitimate requests within one week. Occasionally it may take me longer than a week if your request is particularly complex. In this case, I will notify you and keep you updated.

Security

I have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, I limit access to your personal data to those employees, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know such data. They will not have direct access to your personal data as I will limit what information on my instructions they process. These parties who I permit to have access to your personal data are also subject to a duty of confidentiality.

However, I cannot absolutely guarantee the security of your personal data.

I have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where I am legally required to do so.