Privacy Policy - The Manchester therapist

Information Collection, Use, and Sharing

Samantha Lou - The Manchester Therapist is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We only have access to/collect information that you volunteer via the website contact forms Ie/ 'Reach out using the form below' or anything you share via email or other direct contact from you. We will not sell or rent this information to anyone.

We will use your information to respond to you regarding the reason you contacted us. 

We will never share your information with any third party outside of our organisation other than as necessary to fulfil your request, e.g. to fulfil an service you requested or if you are in danger. On either of these occasions you will know in advance. 

Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email in the future to tell you about specials, updates,  new products or services, or changes to this privacy policy. We will never spam you. 

You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do this at any time by contacting us (link to Contact page).

Security

We take precautions to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and offline.

Wherever we collect sensitive information (such as financial data), that information is encrypted and transmitted to us in a secure way. You can verify this by looking for a lock icon in the address bar and looking for “https” at the beginning of the address of the Web page.

While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, billing or customer service) are granted access to personally identifiable information. The computers/servers in which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.

If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us (link to Contact page) immediately.

Online video calls: Online appointments and video calls are done via Zoom. This is because the data transmitted during meetings, webinars, chat sessions are encrypted and secure. Zoom is compliant with the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement. They also have a GDPR compliance statement on their website – Zoom GDPR Statement. If Zoom is not suitable for you for any reason, please advise your practitioner with plenty of notice so they can provide GDPR encrypted and secure alternatives for your safety, confidentiality and comfort.

Text Messages: All data shared via text messages are password protected and kept to a minimum with protective remote deletion available if the password protected device is lost. 

Client/patient records will be kept to a minimum. They will be coded with no identifiable information and protected as per the  Data Protection Act and the Common Law Duty of Confidentiality. Client/Patient notes will only be viewed by your therapists/practitioners. Records will only be viewed y the professionals directly involved in your care or in the case of a pre-agreed referral basic pre-agreed information will be shared. On occasion non-identifiable details may be shared between your therapists and their professional supervisor using such terms as 'Client X has these symptoms and is being supported by these methods'. This allows your therapist to ensure they are considering all suitable ways of supporting you. The therapist / supervisor relationship is good practice ensuring you are kept safe, supported and given the highest standards of care. 

Confidentiality when safeguarding: In exceptional circumstances it may be necessary to breach the client’s confidentiality with or without their immediate knowledge or consent. This would be the case where there are significant risks to the client’s psychological wellbeing; where the alleged perpetrator may be a current risk to others or where there is risk of jeopardising a potential investigation. 

Referrals: Where a practitioner finds themselves unable to come to an agreement with a client, the therapist may refer the client to a suitably qualified colleague. Therapists will both make and receive referrals when working in services with other professionals. In making referrals, practitioners should consider the needs of the client and to the best of their knowledge refer to another professional with the appropriate skills and experience. In receiving referrals, the practitioner should consider whether the referral is appropriate for their professional service, establish the client’s understanding of the purpose of the referral, and consider as far as possible prior to meeting the client whether the referral falls appropriately within their own areas of practice.

The practitioner’s right to withdraw their service: There are circumstances in which a therapist may decide to terminate the agreement for provision of your services. The circumstances may be personal or professional. The personal circumstances may include but will not be restricted to leaving employment in the service, incidences of illness or family commitments. The professional issues may relate to service structural changes, safety, or provision of most appropriate service. In these circumstances, therapists will, as far as possible, work to ease the transition of service provision and give as much notice as is practical in the particular situation.

Cookies: We use “cookies” on this site. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor’s hard drive to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, when we use a cookie to identify you, you would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information on our site.

Links: This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.