Privacy | Aspect autism

As part of our professional duty of care, information regarding you must be collected to enable us to work with you most efficiently. This privacy policy shows how your personal and sensitive information will be used, stored and protected, in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into effect May 2018.

What information is being collected?

As a psychological service, it is part of our professional practice to collect information which would be classed as personally identifiable. This would include your name, address, email address, date of birth and phone number. This information might be obtained via our webpage enquiry system or collected when you speak to one of our advisors on initial enquiry. Should you proceed to make use of the clinical service, further information might be requested, such as your GP details. Information shared as part of the assessment service will be securely stored as electronic clinical notes. Practitioners working within Aspect Autism consultancy are professionally required to keep these clinical notes which may contain sensitive information. We may sometimes use psychological outcome measures (in order to understand more about difficulties and your progress thereafter. We may also collect brief information at the end of our input via an anonymous online survey (Survey Monkey) to gather information about your experience of the use of our service. Please note that this survey is to help improve our practice, and it is voluntary and you do not have to complete it if you do not wish to.

In order to reduce the risk of data breach it is strongly recommended that you do not disclose sensitive information via email or text message and we will also not do this when sending information to you.

Why is information being collected?

Such information is necessary to fulfil the contracted service that we have been asked to provide (e.g. psychological assessment, therapy or a clinical report). We will require your GP details to allow us to contact them should we have any concerns about your current level of risk. We require your contact details so that we can reach you to respond to your initial enquiry, or should an appointment need to be rearranged. In order for us to contact you by text, your number will be entered manually with no personally identifiable information contained within the content of the text to identify you or explicitly state the nature of our involvement. The aim of the text may be to confirm an appointment time or request you making contact to discuss something, which we will already have discussed. I will store your first name and surname initial on my mobile phone during the period of our professional involvement. No other information will be stored about you in this format. This information is only accessible by your allocated clinician and is password protected. This information will be deleted from your clinician’s phone as soon as you have finished working together. We will discuss if you do / do not wish to be contacted by phone and your privacy will always be respected.

Data storage

Your written information will be kept in a file and stored securely to which we will only have access to. All digital information and storage will be encrypted (e.g, emails, information databases etc). Electronic information will also be backed up regularly on an external disc drive. Your information will be retained for 7 years as according to professional guidelines. Your information will be deleted or shredded at the end of these 7 years.

Who will my information be shared with?

The information you provide is confidential, however there are certain circumstances where I have a duty of care to share your information:

- if there are significant concerns regarding your own levels or risk and safety

- to protect a child or vulnerable adult thought to be at risk
- if we are asked to disclose your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation

We can also share your information if you have given explicit consent that you wish it to be shared (e.g. with another professional or family member).

We will not routinely share your information with other health professionals (e.g, your GP) unless you specifically ask or if there is any significant risk of harm to yourself or others.

Right to access

You have a right to ask for a copy of your personal information (free of charge) in an electronic or paper format and within one month of your request.

Right to rectification

You have the right to request changes to factually inaccurate information that is held about you. If this is a change to a report, this change would be added and the accurate report would be provided to you.

Right to erasure

GDPR guidance states that people have the right to 'be forgotten' i.e., for information held about them to be erased. Within our practice as a therapist, and in line with guidance from the regulatory bodies such as NMC or HCPC, we have a lawful basis to retain your information for 7 years therefore this right does not apply to health records and we would be unable to erase any part of your health records.

Use of Cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on a computer hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about webpage traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to client needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help provide a better website by enabling me to monitor which pages clients find most useful. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, please note that we do not have any control over the destination website. We therefore cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting other sites and such other sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

If you wish to discuss any of the above, please do not hesitate to ask us and please check this page regularly as it may be updated at any time.

Ms Alison Geddes, Aspect Autism Consultancy Ltd (SC806061)