Your therapy sessions are confidential, we am required to abide by the Data Protection Act, now known as GDPR 2018. This means that we need your consent to store your information, such as name and phone number, and we must keep it safe and not allow others to access it.

We keep client records in a locked box, and we anonymise all client notes. Only in the first session do we write detailed notes with your address and so on, after this everything is written under initials and session number.

There is always a slight risk when holding onto someone’s data, however we do our utmost to ensure your data is kept safe.

We need your written permission to talk to anyone else on your behalf, for example a GP.

The only exceptions to this rule are:

• There is a risk of serious harm to you or another person.
• There is a police investigation into an allegation that you have made against another person. such as historic or recent abuse or sexual violence. In these cases the police can ask for all medical records and this includes therapy records. You can refuse, however, the Judge overseeing the trial could order us to share them. For this reason we must keep your therapy records for up to 7 years, especially if they contain details of abuse committed against you, in case you ever decide to report this to the police.

If you tell us something that makes us think there is a risk of serious harm and we need to tell someone else, we will endeavour to discuss this with you first, and we hope it would be a supportive process. Examples of people we might need to tell are GP’s and social workers.

If you have any concerns about this please feel free to discuss it with us during your sessions.