Fees

Cancellation and missed session policy

If for any reason you are unable to attend your appointment please let me know as soon as possible. The required notice for cancellation is 24 hours. Where there is less notice of cancellation or if you do not attend your appointment you will still be charged the full fee. All paid fees are non-refundable.

Anti-discrimination policy

I am strongly committed to anti-discrimination. I value difference and diversity and do not discriminate on the grounds of age, gender and gender identity, sexual preference or orientation, marital/partnership status, religion, race, colour, national origin, disability, heritage or political belief.

Data Management and Retention Policy

I will always:

• value the personal information entrusted to me and go further than just the letter of the law when it comes to handling personal information by adopting high practice standards.
• Consider and address privacy/confidentiality issues at every stage of my contact with clients.
• Be open with clients about the extent of confidentiality (see below) and its exceptions.
• Keep personal information to the minimum necessary and delete it when it is no longer needed.

Confidentiality 

It’s important that you know that the law may forbid our normal confidentiality in the following circumstances:

• If I become aware, or have good reason to suspect, that you have knowledge of:
• A past or future incident/situation that may be dangerous or harmful to a child, you or another adult, and that is not known to the relevant authorities.
• Future or past criminal activity that has not been resolved in law. This means any criminal activity, of which the relevant authorities are either unaware or a case they know about which they consider not to be closed (provided you do not present information in therapy which would reasonably re-open the case). This does not include parking or traffic offences unless there is intent, by you or anyone else, to cause danger to yourself or others, or that it is deemed to be a “serious offence”. For our purposes a serious offence is something for which you could be imprisoned and for which the sentence (not necessarily imprisonment) hasn’t yet been served.

In these circumstances I will work with you to see if we can work together to make appropriate disclosures.

It is also compulsory to report terrorism, potential radicalisation, money laundering and female genital mutilation to the appropriate authorities.

Other than as required by law, I will routinely discuss your case with my supervisor (in order to ensure that you get the best service), my supervisor will have access to your details if I am suddenly unavailable (to contact you and offer you ongoing care) and I may talk or write to your GP (but I will not give any personal details beyond what you are working on).

Please also note that I reserve the right to record sessions where it is deemed appropriate.

Some private health cash plan providers accept CNHC registration as a condition for paying claims. (Please always check with your insurance provider before treatment, if you intend to claim on your plan).

Privacy Statement

Contact information:

The Hypnotherapy Practice
Park Road, Orpington, BR5 4AS
07869 663789
enquiries@hypnotherapypractice.co.uk

www.hypnotherapypractice.co.uk

The basis on which I keep client data is that of “Legitimate Interests”. This means that the data is necessary for me to fulfil the contract that we have together (ie to provide therapy) and that it is data that you would reasonably expect me to hold and use.

For those who enquire about therapy, the data I hold includes any information you have sent me by email/text/message.

For those who book and attend at least one session, the data I hold includes:

• Basic information such as name, email address, phone number
• Information that you give me as part of the work we do together
• Records of what interventions that I use (or potentially do not use) in our sessions
• Emails, texts and/or messages that are sent between us
• Information sent from any third party, eg GP, insurance company, EAP
• Audio recordings of sessions (if and when deemed appropriate)

Some of the information that you give me may fall under the definition of special category of data as defined by the General Data Protection Regulation. The condition for processing this special data is “processing is necessary for medical diagnosis, the provision of health care or treatment pursuant to contract with a health professional”.

Data is not shared with anyone, except possibly your GP, and for any reasons covered by the Requirements for Disclosure which are detailed and discussed when we first meet.

The data is primarily used to enable me to provide therapy for you. It may also be used for statistical purposes.

Details of where data is held:

• Any emails sent between us are held either on my computer’s hard drive or exchange server or if archived, in Dropbox which is a secure cloud based storage which is itself GDPR compliant. Any held on my mobile phone which is code protected.
• Any text messages sent between us are held on my mobile phone which is code protected.
• Your notes are securely stored in Dropbox. A coding system enables the therapist to know whose notes are whose, but a stranger seeing the notes would not be able to identify who they referred to.
• Any appropriate audio recordings of sessions are stored in Dropbox.
• If you use Paypal or online banking then clearly these systems will hold your data. I will download from these systems for accounting purposes and the resulting spreadsheets are held in Dropbox.

Your data is kept for 8 years. The length of time is based on the stipulation of the CNHC. After this time any paper records are shredded and computer records permanently deleted.

The Hypnotherapy Practice takes the security of data seriously and as such:

• All data is held securely (see details of where data is held above)
• Any data transmitted is sent encrypted where possible
• For accounting purposes Excel spreadsheets are used

However:

• I am not in control of data (including emails and texts) which you send me
• Apps such as Facebook routinely access any information held and this is beyond my control.

If there is any breach of data security The Hypnotherapy Practice will give full details to the Information Commissioners Office and any person affected within 72 hours of the breach and do all possible to minimise any potential impact.

You have rights with regards to the data held:

• The right of access. I will provide you with all data I hold on you as soon as I can following a request (and definitely within 30 days, unless this is impossible due to holidays or illness).
• The right to rectification. If any data I hold is incorrect, just let me know and I will correct it as soon as I can following a request (and definitely within 30 days, unless this is impossible due to holidays or illness).
• The right to erasure. If you wish me to erase your data just let me know and I will delete any computer records and shred any paper records as soon as I can following a request (and definitely within 30 days, unless this is impossible due to holidays or illness). NB: data may be retained for scientific research, historical research or statistical purposes where erasure is likely to render impossible or seriously impair the achievement of that processing but this would never include case notes or data such as address/email/phone
• The right to restrict processing. This would usually be a stop-gap measure before correction of any errors or before erasure
• The right to data portability. This might apply if you want your notes sent to another therapist for example, but it is likely that the easiest solution would come under the right to access, ie I would send the data to you.
• The right to object to:
  • processing based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority (including profiling). The Hypnotherapy Practice does not engage in these things.
  • Direct marketing (The Hypnotherapy Practice will not engage in this)
  • processing for purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics. For this, you must provide grounds for your objection.
  • automated decision making and profiling. The Hypnotherapy Practice does not engage in automated decision making or profiling.