CLEAR requires you to give us information about yourself and possibly your family so we can make sure you receive the appropriate service. This policy explains what happens with this information.
Lawful basis for holding and using your personal information
This GDPR legislation of 2018 requires us to have a lawful basis for processing your personal data under article 6 of GDPR. For CLEAR this will be Article 6(1)(f) ‘legitimate interest’ in that we store and use your data on the basis of legitimate interest. This enables us to fulfil our offer of counselling and therapy to you.
Engaging with us
When you interact with our website, contact us, join a mailing list or refer to us we will ask you for certain pieces of information that we need in order to follow up your enquiry and/or contact you. We will process your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests Article 6(1)(f) and sometimes your consent, Article 6(1)(a).
What information do we record?
The information we request from you is likely to include personal or sensitive information, such as:
Personal information
- first name or given name
- family name or surname
- address
- email address
- telephone numbers
- date of birth
Sensitive personal information
- gender, ethnicity and marital status
- physical or mental health condition
- other details on your referral form
What do we use your information for?
We use your personal information to process your enquiry and, where appropriate, to provide you with support through our service. We may also use some of the information you provide us with for other reasons, such as to:
- Respond to any enquiries you make
- Help us plan services to support you
- Contact you regarding services offered to you, or other important updates regarding CLEAR
- Maintain our records
- Help us develop our service
- Organise any events in which you wish to participate in
- Reporting to funders
- Account for our decisions and investigate complaints
- Identify and protect those at risk of harm
- Ensure the accuracy of our records
- Prevent and detect crime
- Protect you and other people
- Analyse and improve our website, communications and administrative processes
Keeping your data safe - Information Security
All the information that you provide us with is held according to Data Protection regulations. CLEAR constantly work to make sure that your data is properly protected through encryption, firewalls and monitoring.
We recognise that the information you provide us may be sensitive and we will respect your confidentiality. We keep information about you confidential. This means we store it securely and control who has access to it. Your data will only be seen by people who need to view it for their work at CLEAR to provide you with an appropriate service, and we ensure that our staff are trained in protecting your information.
We will not share any information where we are not legally or professionally required to do so. There may be cases where your notes/records are requested by legal teams and you can find this information in our pre trial therapy policy/information, if you have any questions about this process please contact us,
We will only share such information as necessary, and where we are satisfied that the other organisation is entitled to receive it and will keep your information secure.
Data controller
We are also known as a data controller. We are responsible for collecting and processing your personal information. Processing includes the organisation, retrieval, consultation, use and deletion or destruction of information and its disclosure to other agencies.
The information you provide will be processed mainly in connection with the administration of our services. A full list of what information we control and process and for what purposes is set out in our notification with the Information Commissioner's Register of Data Controllers. You can view our registration at the Information Commissioner's website https://ico.org.uk/
If you have difficulty understanding this information or want to ask more questions, please contact us.
Gaining your consent
When a referral is made to CLEAR, we will tell you how your information will be used, and that it may be necessary to share this with other services and organisations.
If it is identified that we need to share your information, we will ask for your consent before doing so. However, there are times when we may still need to share it, for example:
- any stated purposes we tell you about when you supply us with information
- as part of our duty to protect a child, a vulnerable adult, yourself or the public.
- for the prevention and detection of a crime
- if we are required to do so by any court or law
Retention Period
We are required by the professional body we are accredited by the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) to keep records for 7 years. If possible, we will minimise the amount of records we hold about you over time.
Corrections and concerns
If you believe that the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, or if you have concerns about how we are handling your personal information, please contact us and we will try to resolve those concerns.
If you wish to have your personal information deleted, please let us know and we will take reasonable steps to delete it (unless we need to keep it for legal, professional, auditing or internal risk management reasons).
If we become aware of any ongoing concerns or problems concerning our privacy practices, we will take these issues seriously and work to address them.
Your Rights
- You can request access to your records at any time, and this must be provided within 30 days.
- You can ask for data to be erased at any time, although we have a duty to retain certain information as indicated above under retention.
- You can ask us to limit how we use your personal data or to stop processing it
- You can make a complaint regarding handling of your data, but we ask that you discuss this first with us to see if the matter can be resolved
If you want to make a formal complaint you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Photography and filming
If you attend an event or take part in a promotional activity, we may ask to take your photograph or film you. Any images we hold, whether in still photographs or video, may be covered by the definition of personal data in the Data Protection Act 1998. We will need your consent in order to take and use these images fairly and lawfully.
Withdrawing consent – re photography
Even if you sign the consent form, you still have the right to withdraw your consent. You should inform us of this in writing.
Once you withdraw your consent, we cannot use the relevant images again, but we will not usually be able to recall any documents in which your image has already appeared.
Contact us
Information Officer
CLEAR, 7-8 Cathedral Lane, TRURO, Cornwall TR1 2QS
