Introduction

Your privacy is very important to me and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from the initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended, including:

• Why I am able to process your information and what purpose I am processing it for

• Whether you have to provide it to me

• How long I store it for

• Whether there are other recipients of your personal information

• Whether I intend to transfer it to another country

• Whether I do automated decision-making or profiling, and

• Your data protection rights.

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via email.

‘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 instance, the data controller is me. I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (registration number: ZB038759). My phone number is 07871 314761. My email address is hello@morganecounselling.co.uk.

My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information

The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data. I have explained these below:

If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.
If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract. The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case counselling) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you).

How I use your information

Initial contact.
When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services, I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include your name, email address and phone number. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send me your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf. If you decide not to proceed, I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within a month. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know.

While you are accessing counselling.
Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if you are considered to be an immediate serious risk to yourself or to other people (then further professional advice could be beneficial), if any illegal activities such as money laundering or acts of terrorism where not to disclose would break the law, such disclosures will be passed onto the relevant authority without delay (I am liable to civil or court procedure if information of this sort is not disclosed), if any child protection issues where a child is, or could be at risk of harm or neglect must be reported to the appropriate authorities as required by the Children Act 1989. I am also required to discuss client work with my clinical supervisor, and this is standard, professional practice - identities are not revealed during this time and my supervisor is also bound by the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society’s (NCPS) Code of Ethics (see below).
If any of the above mentioned were to be disclosed, any requirement of further action would always be discussed within the session and, where possible, would be acted on together, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely on my password-protected laptop and phone, and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in a locked cabinet. For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than a month. If there is relevant information contained in a text message I will add it to my written notes and delete your message on my device. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted upon reading it if it is not important. If necessary I will add it to my written notes and delete your email.

After counselling has ended.
Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 7 years from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me.
If you were under 18 when we worked together, I will keep your records until your 25th birthday, or until your 26th if you were 17 when our work ended. This is in line with professional guidance on retaining records for young people.

Third party recipients of personal data

I keep your counselling records myself and do not share them with anyone, other than in the circumstances described above.

Some of the everyday tools I use to run my practice do involve third parties processing limited personal information on my behalf. These fall into the following categories:

• My website provider, Squarespace, which hosts my website and handles any enquiry you send through it
• My email and calendar provider, which holds our correspondence and appointment times
• My video conferencing provider, which I use for online sessions
• My website analytics provider, Google Analytics, where you have consented to analytics cookies

I have carefully selected the providers I work with, and each is bound by a contract setting out what they may do with any information I share. None of them is permitted to use your information for any purpose other than providing the service I have contracted them for.

Transferring your information outside the UK

I do not transfer your counselling records outside the UK.

Some of the providers listed above are based in the United States, which means limited personal information — such as an enquiry you send through my website — may be processed there. Where this happens, the transfer is covered by safeguards recognised under UK data protection law, such as the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or an International Data Transfer Agreement. These are designed to ensure your information receives a similar level of protection to that it would have in the UK.

Automated decision-making and profiling

I do not use automated decision-making or profiling. Every decision about your care is made by me, as a person, in conversation with you.

Your rights

I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances.
You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

If I do hold information about you I will:
• give you a description of it and where it came from;
• tell you why I am holding its, tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to;
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to morgane@younitytherapies.com.
If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by emailing to the contact details given above. I would welcome any suggestions for improving my data protection procedures. If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Data security

I take the security of the data I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. I use encrypted devices and locked filing cabinet.

Visitors to my website

When someone visits my website, Squarespace, which hosts it, collects standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. I use this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. The reports I see do not identify you personally, and I do not make, nor allow Squarespace to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website.

I also use Google Search Console, which shows me how people find my site through Google — the searches that led them there and which pages appeared. This information is aggregated and does not identify individual visitors.

You can read the Squarespace privacy notice at https://www.squarespace.com/privacy

I use cookies to help my website work properly. Some are essential and are needed for the site to function. Others, used to measure how the site is performing, are not essential, and I will only set them if you have given your consent through the cookie banner when you first visit. You can change or withdraw your consent at any time through the cookie preferences link in the footer of my website. You can find out more about the cookies Squarespace uses at https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001264507

My lawful basis for using non-essential cookies is your consent.

If you fill in a form on my website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to me.

Last updated: 26 October 2026