The GDPR states that there must be a lawful basis for processing your personal data. The basis will depend on the stage at which your data is being processed. If you have had therapy and it has now ended, legitimate interest will be used as a lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with a therapist associated with Virtual Therapy rooms to consider therapy, your personal data will be processed where it is necessary for the performance of a working contract. The GDPR also makes sure that therapists look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to them appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for us processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case therapy sessions) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between the therapist and you).
How we will use your information:
We will never use your personal data for any purposes other than the administration of the therapy service that we are providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments or anything directly relevant to your therapy sessions. We will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Initial contact:
When you contact this website to book your first appointment it will collect some brief information to help process your enquiry and enable your enquiry to be responded to personally. This will include your name and contact method, for example an email address or phone number. This information is requested so that you can be contacted by one of the therapists associated publicly under the name of Virtual Therapy Rooms. It will also ask you to select from a drop down menu the brief nature of your enquiry. The website will store these details electronically and generate a secure email to the main therapist (Anna McNamara) who will either get in touch with you personally or refer your details via secure email to another appropriate therapist who has the availablity or specialism to attend better to your enquiry. They will then contact you using the details you have provided. These details would also be used to contact you if your therapist was unable to attend an appointment due to unforeseen circumstances. If you do not want to be contacted under any circumstances you may request this with your therapist when you are negotiating the working contract with them. All personal data can be deleted within one month at your request. If you would like this delete sooner, please let your therapist know.
While you are accessing therapy:
Your email address or phone number will be used to provide you with written confirmation of your appointment times if you have given consent for this. Your email address and telephone number will only be used to contact you regarding appointment times unless agreed that we will also use your email address to email you information that is relevant to your therapy sessions.
At the beginning of your first appointment we will ask you to complete a personal details form containing your name, address, date of birth, contact information and also contact information for your GP. The form is stored electrinically on a passowrd protected device. Please be aware that we will not routinely contact your GP to inform your GP of your attendance as your attendance is confidential. To fulfil our duty of care towards you while also maintaining your confidentiality we will only contact your GP if it is necessary and should these circumstances arise we would discuss this with you wherever possible before contacting your GP.
What is said in therapy sessions will be kept confidential. We are registered Members of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and abide by their professional code of ethics. Confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal or ethical obligations to disclose, for example, if you disclose abuse/neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires us to disclose information.
In the event that confidentiality must be broken we will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
Counsellors are required to have regular supervision support so we may discuss aspects of the therapy with a supervisor. This would be done without identifying you.
We may keep brief notes of our therapy sessions for the purpose of assisting our work together. The notes help us to keep track of the issues that we are working on and they are for our use only. The notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and they are stored securely in in a password protected device that only your therapist will have access to. Your therapy notes are stored separately to your personal details form.
There are reasons why counsellors are required to keep records after therapy has ended. For example, in the case of financial transactions personal information must be retained for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes. Retaining your therapy notes ensures that we can continue to offer you an efficient service if you make contact after therapy has ended. Your therapy notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and continue to be stored securely on a password protected device that only your therapist will have access. This can be stored for seven years after therapy has ended. I will keep your notes for three years after your therapy ends in line with BACP requirements.
Your personal details form is confidentially destroyed on ending your therapy sessions. Please note that I do need to keep a record of your name, date of birth and your client reference number for three years after your therapy ends. Your client reference number corresponds with a client reference number on your therapy notes and therefore enables me to identify your therapy notes if necessary. Third party recipients of personal data:
Your enquiry on this website will share a limited amount of personal data with third parties in order to provide therapy services to you and to fulfil legal obligations in respect of tax and accounting purposes. If you contact to book an appointment your name will be passed to an appropriate therapist who is publicised as affiliated with Virtual Therapy Rooms. We will never pass on your contact details to any third party organisations for the purposes of sales, marketing or research.
If your appointments are paid for or arranged via a third party, for example your employer, the only information shared with the third party is your dates of attendance and non-attendance for invoicing and payment purposes. Details about what is discussed in your appointments will remain confidential and can only be shared if you give your written consent to do so.
Data security:
We take the security of the data that we hold about you very seriously. Our email accounts are password protected and mobile phones and laptops used to respond to your emails are password protected and have anti-virus software. Any email correspondence will be deleted within one month if it is not necessary to keep it. If it is necessary to retain the information we will print the email and store it securely in a locked cabinet that only we have access to.
Website visitors:
By accessing the website, you are consenting to the information collection and use of practices described in this privacy notice. Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on the website, none of the data that you supply will be passed to any third party data processors. The data will be collated into an email and sent over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by local computers and devices.
The website uses cookies and Google Analytics. Almost all websites use cookies which are small files that get put on your computer by websites as you surf them. These cookies can store lots of information which can have privacy implications. Google Analytics is a service provided by Google that gathers anonymous data on how people are using websites and then provides visitor statistics, details of page views etc. This service is used by many website owners as the data helps website owners to improve their websites.
When accessing the website for the first time you will be asked to consent or decline to the gathering of cookies and provided with information which explains the different types. You will have the option to accept or decline these. There are also settings which allow you to change your permission at any time. This can be accessed by clicking on the star icon at the bottom of the webpage.
Your rights- Under GDPR, 2018 guidelines you have the following rights:
The right to request access to the personal information that is stored and processed about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information held or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask that we restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters. If you would like to make a request relating to any of the rights above, please send a request in writing by emailing
Queries:
‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person or organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data in this website. In this instance, the data controller is Anna McNamara who is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office. The registration number for Anna McNamara, Virtual Therapy Rooms is C1352560. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or the way in which the website handles your personal information you can contact Anna via phone on 07818100424 or email:
Complaints:
If you have a complaint about how your personal data is handled, please do not hesitate to get in touch by email at
Changes to privacy notice: This privacy notice may be updated from time to time, so please check occasionally for any updates.