The Sage Therapist is committed to keeping your personal information well. Therefore, your privacy is of utmost importance to us, meaning that we handle your data responsibly and secure it with appropriate safeguards.
Within this policy “I”, "we", "us" and "our" refer to The Sage Therapist. You will find a variety of links within our Privacy Policy, you may also be provided with some helpful links to well-being resources from your counselling sessions. It is important to remember that whilst we check the links are reliable and trustworthy, the websites they take you to are not under control and therefore The Sage Therapist is not liable for any issues that may result from you visiting their webpages. The Sage Therapist is unable to comment on their uses of your personal data, the content that you see or any services they may offer you, we would recommend viewing their privacy policy before accepting anything.
The Sage Therapist is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Registering with the ICO means any personal data provided by yourself will be held and dealt with in line with the data protection principles set out within the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) informed by the Data Protection Act 2018.
Personal data that you provide includes any written or verbal communication, submitted electronic forms and/or use of this website. Therefore when you submit a request through any of these communication styles for counselling via The Sage Therapist, you have provided informed consent to us processing your data under our privacy policy terms.
It is important that you are aware of what personal information The Sage Therapist collects from you.
Access to counselling, including enquiries and requests to access counselling from The Sage Therapist that come via telephone, email and/or electronic forms are forms of us collecting your personal data. To access our counselling services you will have to provide your name, address, telephone or mobile number and email address. During your enquiry for counselling, there will be a discussion around your availability, wants and needs for counselling sessions, as well as any further details which we feel are necessary to process your request for counselling.
I will use personal data that has been provided by you for the purpose of managing our relationship, handling complaints, communicating and/or providing additional support service information via email, text, post and/or telephone.
The Sage Therapist is a registered member of the British Association Of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and therefore adheres to the Code Of Ethics, which states vital principles including the importance of client-counsellor confidentiality. We hope to provide you with a space to share anything you feel is important knowing that it will remain confidential.
The Sage Therapist will make a commitment during contracting with clients in their initial session and throughout their counselling journey that we will not disclose any client information, except in either of the two situations:
It is important to note that The Sage Therapist will always aim to discuss situations, where appropriate, which may challenge and/or alter existing confidentiality agreements before doing so.
Counselling provided by The Sage Therapist is not a free service, therefore there will be an agreed payment plan between the counsellor and client within their contract.
To pay for the counselling received by The Sage Therapist it is necessary that we provide the client with essential payment information. In exchange, it will also be necessary for the client to share their payment information with The Sage Therapist. The information provided by the client will be shared with payment processing third-party banks and accounting services, however, we ensure that this is strictly for payment processing and account keeping only.
The Sage Therapist endeavour to keep all personal information provided by yourself safe and secure. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely ensuring that we have access to all the information we need to properly and efficiently run our business in accordance with this policy.
The Sage Therapist will store your personal information electronically via a secure cloud server. We have implemented industry-standard data security and encryption protocols, as well as the use of multi-factor authentication.
Paper forms containing personal information provided by you are stored in a locked cabinet which can only be accessed by The Sage Therapist.
The Sage Therapist inbox for email communications is protected by password and/or facial authentication to prevent unauthorised access requests.
Any phone contact whether verbal or written communication, is protected by password and/or facial recognition.
As part of The Sage Therapist counselling process, we will write notes on client sessions. Any notes made regarding your session will be carefully anonymised and held separately from identifiable personal information. To adhere to the BACP professional supervision requirements, session notes may also be used in counselling supervision sessions.
The Sage Therapist endeavours to meet ICO requirements, adhere to the BACP Code of Ethics and maintain agreements with our insurance provider, therefore any personal information we gather on you is retained as followed:
At any point, both during and after receiving counselling from The Sage Therapist, you are entitled to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold on you. It is also within your rights to request us to amend any inaccuracies you find within your personal information held. This is what is known as a 'Subject To Access Request'. For either of these requests, please do so via our email address thesagetherapist@protonmail.com
Within your initial counselling session with The Sage Therapist, you will be asked to sign a contract which includes you giving us your informed consent to store and process your personal information. It is within your rights to withdraw your consent at any point, however, please note that if the request to withdraw consent is made during active counselling then sessions would have to end with immediate effect. To withdraw your consent please do so via our email address thesagetherapist@protonmail.com
If you are still unsure of the rights you have over your data, please visit the ICO information page.
A cookie is a small text file which gets downloaded onto our 'terminal equipment' such as a computer when accessing a website. By having cookies on your device, it allows websites to recognise you and store some information on preferences & behaviours. For more information about cookies visit the ICO dedicated pages.
When first visiting The Sage Therapist website you will receive a cookie pop-up which will ask you to accept or decline cookies. If you accept the cookies, The Sage Therapist can see which of our pages are being used, this helps us to analyse data which improves our website by tailoring it to visitor needs. Data is anonymised and is only used for analytical purposes.
Declining or blocking cookies may have a negative impact on your usability on many websites and may restrict your access to certain features.
For up-to-date information on blocking or deleting cookies, please see the below links:
The Sage Therapist website is owned and controlled by The Sage Therapist.
The personal data that is provided by you will be held in our website database, this means that it will be stored on the servers of our hosting services providers. The name of The Sage Therapist's hosting services provider is GoDaddy, for more information on them or to visit their webpage, click here. The hosting facilities for our website are situated outside of the United Kingdom, in the United States. Therefore the competent data protection authorities have made an "adequacy decision" with respect to the data protection laws of each of these countries. Transfers to each of these countries will be protected by appropriate safeguards, to see GoDaddy's privacy policy, click here.
You can contact us via the following channels:
As part of our commitment to good practice The Sage Therapist will review regularly this privacy policy and from time-to-time may publish a new version to the website with relevant amendments. We would recommend you also review the privacy policy page on occasion to ensure you are up-to-date and happy with any changes.
Last updated May 2023
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