Your Right to Privacy 
 
What do Vine Counselling Services (VCS) do with your personal information? 
 
VCS are serious about protecting your privacy and storing your data securely. 
New legislation now exists which states what obligations we have to follow when collecting and storing your data, its called General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). These are the rules that govern how VCS collects, stores and uses personal data. It is possible you have received a number of emails or letters about it from other people who hold your personal data. 
 
What is GDPR? 
 
GDPR covers any information that can be classified as personal details or information that can be used to identify you, and covers a range of information including: 
 
Name 
Address 
Email/ IP addresses 
Telephone numbers 
Social media posts 
Bank details 
 
Parental consent will be required to process any data relating to children aged 16 and under 
 
Don’t panic! All of the information that we collect is treated with the highest standards of confidentiality and security. 
 
What information do we collect? 
 
When you contact VCS to receive information and updates, book counselling, become a ‘Five Year Friend’ or to join our mailing list, we need to be able to contact you. We will record your name, address, telephone number/s, referral source and email contact. We call this your CONTACT INFORMATION 
 
As a contact or client, you may also provide information about your specific situation, and any preferences for the kind of information you wish to receive. We call this SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION 
 
VCS may also need to monitor who VCS are in contact with for equalities monitoring, including your age, disability, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. We call this DEMOGRAPHIC DATA. 
 
Where is this information kept? 
 
Vine Counselling Services keeps all of these records on either on password protected encrypted digital systems, which are regularly updated with secure protection, or in paper form in a secure filing system. Where back-ups are in the cloud these will be GDPR compliant. 
 
We have strict controls over who can access your personal data. All mobile devices are digitally encrypted, and password protected, and we have tight controls about who on the staff team can access this data. 
 
Why do we collect this data? 
 
VCS collects this data for the following reasons: 
 
CONTACT INFORMATION - So that we can keep in touch with you. 
SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION - So that we can send you relevant information. 
DEMOGRAPHIC DATA. - So that we can monitor if VCS are contacting a broad range of people and partner organisations, we may need to report anonymously equalities data 
about our contacts. 
 
Vine Counselling Services will only collect the data it really needs, and will only keep that data for a period of time required either by law or for a period where it must be retained for professional purposes, usually 7 years (for clients). 
 
What do we do with this data – who can see it? 
 
CONTACT INFORMATION  
VCS will not share this information with any third party, unless you give us explicit consent to share it or if we feel you or another person is at risk of harm, including safeguarding concerns. 
 
SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION  
Will only be shared with a third party outside of VCS if you give us explicit consent to share it or if we feel you or another person is at risk of harm or if we are legally required to do so. 
Your data will only be shared within VCS on a need to know basis, meaning that the only people who can access it are directly responsible for mail-outs to contacts and clients. 
 
DEMOGRAPHIC DATA.  
We do not share this data in any way where you could be identified. We will only provide anonymised reports e.g. 64% of members are women and 36% are men. No one outside of VCS will ever see the personal demographic data you share with us. 
 
What happens now? 
 
We will be asking you to give your consent for VCS to continue to store your data. We cannot continue to hold the data we currently have or begin to collect your data, unless you consent for us to do so. Please note, we may not be able to process contacts or bookings if we do not have certain data. 
 
What if I change my mind? 
 
At any point you can choose to stop having your data stored by VCS. All you need to do is email us on vine.counselling@hotmail.co.uk and ask us to “Delete my data” 
 
 
I, ………………………………………., CONFIRM THAT I HAVE READ ‘YOUR RIGHT TO PRIVACY’ AND CONSENT TO VINE COUNSELLING SERVICES CONTINUING TO STORE MY DATA AS SET OUT ABOVE 
Signed………………………………………. 
Dated………………………………………... 
Our site uses cookies. For more information, see our cookie policy. Accept cookies and close
Reject cookies Manage settings