Urgent Help

Privacy Policy

WPH Counselling and Education is a registered charity, providing mental health support services to clients within the Walsall area. We only operate within the UK.

Throughout this policy WPH Counselling and Education may be referred to as ‘WPH, WPH Counselling, we, us, or our’.

Our registered charity number is 1146187 and our company number is 7593537 (registered in England and Wales).

At WPH Counselling, we are committed to keeping your personal information safe and being clear about how we collect your data, how we store it and what we do with it.

This privacy policy applies to the website www.wphcounselling.org; whether you want information or support from us, to use our services, donate to us, work or fundraise for us.

WPH services governed by this policy include services provided via our website, including enquiries and referrals, but not face-to-face, telephone and video/online counselling services, and direct services with children, young people, and their families, where separate confidentiality statements apply.

WPH Counselling is registered under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 as a data controller with the number ZB301710. Full details of this listing can be seen on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

This privacy notice lets you know how we collect, use, and keep your personal information safe. This privacy policy applies only to WPH Counselling and users of this website. It does not extend to any other websites that can be accessed from this website, including, but not limited to, any links we provide to social media platforms, or links shared to other websites. We advise reading the policy policies or statements of other websites before using them.

Please read this privacy policy carefully.

If you have any queries about our Privacy Notice, please get in touch with our data officer, Adam Smith, Administration Manager;

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time.

What information do we collect about you?

Information you give to us directly

We will collect and store information that you give us when you do the following things on our website(s):

  • Make an enquiry
  • Make a referral, for yourself or someone else, for counselling services.
  • Complete a survey or feedback form
  • Sign up to support a campaign
  • Support our work through a donation
  • Fundraise on our behalf
  • Tell us your story (for example, as a media case study)
  • Give us feedback or make a complaint
  • Apply for a job or work with us, including students and volunteers.
  • Enter into a contract with us
  • Are photographed or filmed (for example, at a WPH event)

Information you give to us indirectly

  • We may store data about your visits to our website, for example, your location data or IP address.
  • We may store information about how you navigate our website, although this cannot be used to personally identify you.
  • We may also collect and store your personal information if you interact with us on any social media channels we may use. This will depend on your own privacy settings on these individual channels, so make sure you check these first.

Types of data we may collect

Depending on what you do on our website, we may collect and store information including the following types of personal information:

  • Identity data including name, gender, title etc.
  • Address data
  • Professional data including job title and profession, when you choose to provide this.
  • Contact data including email address, mobile or telephone number etc.
  • Date of birth
  • Relationship status
  • Gender
  • Sexual orientation
  • Disability status
  • Health data including information that you provide to us when making a referral, on behalf of yourself or others, to access our services.
  • Details about your education and career
  • Marketing and communications data
  • Technical data
  • Employment and education data including copies of right to work documentation, CV’s, and cover letters, if you choose to supply this information and apply for a role with us.
  • Other data- such as any additional personal information which you may choose to disclose to us, including in the context of your responses to any survey questions or referral enquiries, for accessing our services.

Certain types of personal information are recognised by data protection law as being more ‘sensitive’. Things like sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, religious or political opinion, data concerning your health (mental or physical) fall into this category.

WPH will only collect sensitive information like this where it informs the provision of the service to you.

How do we use your personal information?

We will use your personal data most commonly for the following purposes:

  • To fulfil our contractual obligations to you
  • If you complete a form or contact us through the WPH Counselling website (e.g. to obtain further information on our services, or enquire about making a referral), we will use your information to action such request  (e.g. to respond to the request or add a client you may be referring to our waiting list).
  • To evaluate your expertise and/or services for a possible collaboration with you
  • To facilitate business relationships in our network by maintaining information about those with expertise within the healthcare sector, which may include recommending your services to clients.
  • To register your interest in accessing or commissioning our services or making a donation to our registered charity.
  • Provide you with information, products, or services you’ve requested or that we feel might be of interest to you.
  • Make our marketing campaigns more targeted and relevant to potential clients and donors; we will only send you marketing information if you have given us specific consent to do.
  • Supporter profiling and analysis: we will use your personal information to help us better target communications, so that you are more likely to receive communications relevant to your interests.
  • Carry out general administrative tasks like dealing with complaints and feedback, essential record-keeping.
  • Keep you safe: in the event that we reasonably think you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse.
  • Conduct and evaluate responses to polls, surveys and market research which you choose to participate in, so that we can improve our website, services and/or strategic development.
  • Monitoring and evaluation: we use your personal information to inform and develop our service delivery.
  • Process applications and enquiries to work at WPH. For example, if you fill in an application form or send us your CV.
  • We may additionally use your personal data instances where we are required by law, where it is necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

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For how long will we keep your personal information (Data Retention)?

At WPH, we are committed to retaining your personal information for no longer than necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was first collected. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office. WPH may hold some types of data for up to seven years.

For example, in the case of financial transactions like donations and purchases, we will keep your personal information for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes, which could be anything up to six years after a transaction has taken place.

Unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law, we will only hold data on our systems for the period necessary to fulfil this Policy or until you request this data is deleted. All information is stored in line with our Data Protection policies and retention schedules, which can be viewed by contacting our Data Protection Officer.

How we share your personal data

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was obtained in the first place. In order to provide our services to you, data may be accessed and shared with our employees and necessary officers. We won’t share it with any third parties and you won’t receive any communications from other organisations unless you explicit consent has been given.

However, there are some very explicit ways in which your data might be shared:

  • In the event that we use trusted third party suppliers to help deliver and operate our services, including but not limited to, IT infrastructure management, professional advisers including consultancy, legal and accounting services, as well as supporting professionals for fundraising activities and campaigns.
  • Where we are legally bound to disclose your personal information, for example, to further criminal investigation or provide information by a court of law
  • There may also be some specific instances where it may be necessary to involve an appropriate third party, such as Local Authority social care teams and emergency services. These include:
    • If you are at risk of hurting yourself
    • If you are at risk of hurting others
    • If a child is suspected of being abused
  • Where possible, we will discuss the decision to involve a third party with you. These decisions will be taken in line with our confidentiality and safeguarding policies, and we will always consider the needs of our clients. Please contact us if you wish to read copies our Safeguarding and Confidentiality policies.
  • We may additionally share your personal data with third parties where required by law, to fulfil our contractual obligations with you, or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

Keeping your personal information safe (Data Security)

We have both digital and operational safeguards to make sure your data is secure. Access to information is reviewed on a regular basis and limited to those people who actually need to access it and are assigned the permission to do so.

We have procedures in place to deal with a suspected data security breach, and will notify you and any applicable regulator of any suspected breach where we are legally required to do so. If you suspect a loss, misuse, or unauthorised access to your data, please let us know immediately by contacting our data protection officer.

WPH Counselling’s web servers are located in the UK.

Your rights and managing your own data

You have the right to request access to the personal information that WPH stores and processes about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information we hold or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether. You can withdraw your consent for us processing your data at any time, however if you do withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provider certain services to you. We will advise this at the time of consent withdrawal is this is the case.

We will not charge you for either considering or complying with a request unless it is deemed to be excessive in nature. We will ask you for proof of identity and upon this being successfully verified, you are entitled to obtain the following information about your personal information:

  • The purposes of the collection, processing, use and storage of your personal data.
  • The source(s) of the personal information, if it was not obtained from you.
  • The categories of personal data stored about you.
  • The recipients (or categories of recipients) to whom your personal data has been or may be transmitted, along with the location of those recipients.
  • The envisaged period of storage for your personal data or the rationale for determining the storage period.
  • The use of any automated decision-making and/or profiling.

If you’d like to make a request relating to any of the rights above, please send a request by emailing management@wphcounselling.org.  Or if you prefer, you can make the request in writing to our Data Protection Officer.

How to make a complaint

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or the way in which WPH handles your personal information, or if you wish to make a complaint, please contact our data protection officer.

If you’re unhappy with our response, you may then raise your concern directly with the Information Commissioner’s Office: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Alternatively you can visit the ICO website.

WPH is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller under number: ZB301710

Changes to our privacy policy

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time, so please check this page occasionally to see if we have included any updates or changes, and that you are happy with them. By using this website, you are deemed to have accepted the terms of the privacy policy, and therefore agree to any updated terms on first use of the updated website, following any amendments.

Contact Details

If you are looking for more information about this privacy policy, data processing and security, or law processing bases, please contact us.

Last updated: October 2023

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