Your personal data

What we need
The Expressive Child Ltd collects and stores information about the children and families we work with for the purpose of being able to provide therapy services. This includes the basic information you provide before your first appointment, such as names, email, phone numbers, address, date of birth, GP, school and any background information you provide to us. In addition, we keep clinical records that are written following each therapy appointment or significant liaison (e.g. meeting, extended phone call, clinically relevant emails) with our clients.

Why we need it
We need to keep clinical records in order to provide you with the best possible therapy, and to ensure continuity of care between appointments. In addition, we have a legal duty to maintain these records in order to comply with guidance on standards of care from our professional body, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and to meet the requirements of our insurance provided through the RCSLT.

What we do with it
All the personal data we hold is processed by our therapists and those we work within the service of providing professional therapy services to you, such as our administrative support.

All of our therapists receive clinical supervision, a requirement set out by the RCSLT ethical framework. Where supervision is provided by a therapist outside of our practice, only the first names of clients will be used in order to protect confidentiality.

In exceptional circumstances, we may be legally required to break confidentiality and share information to ensure a person’s safety. For example, if we believe that a person is at risk of harm, we would break confidentiality to ensure the safety of this person. Where possible we will always try to discuss this with you first. We will share sufficient but only the minimum information that is necessary in order to do this.

What we would also like to do with it
We do not use your information for any purposes other than to provide clinical, therapeutic services to you. If we did ever need to use this for another purpose, we would contact you in advance to discuss this with you further.

How long we keep it
For children, we are required to keep clinical records and associated personal data until a child’s 25th birthday, or, until their 26th birthday, if 17 at conclusion of their treatment, and for adults, we are required to keep data for 7 years. These timescales are legally required to comply with guidance from our professional body, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and to meet the requirements of our insurance.

Ways we keep it safe
All of our data is stored using appropriate measures to ensure it remains confidential.

All of our information is stored electronically. We use mainstream software providers that meet GDPR requirements for both processing and storing data.

Any paper-based information is held in a locked filing cabinet within a secure environment, and once scanned this is destroyed as confidential waste.

All of our electronic equipment, such as mobile phones, laptops, tablets and recording devices, is protected using passwords

All therapists have been trained in the appropriate protection of data, and are contractually required to comply with confidentiality guidelines as part of their employment.

Legal basis
We collect and use clinical information because we have a legal duty to do so to comply with our professional body, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and to meet the requirements of our insurance provider. It is also in the interest of the children and families we work with as it means we can provide continuous care. The legal basis for this is described as being of ‘legitimate interest’, which means that it is collected for a specific purpose (providing a professional therapy service), necessary (we only collect and use data relevant to providing a professional therapy service) and balanced with a reasonable justification for collecting and using this information (is necessary to meet professional and legal requirements)

What are your rights?
You have the right to withdraw consent for us collecting and using information at any time. Information we already hold in clinical records cannot be destroyed as we have a legal duty to keep this information in line with the timescales outlined above. If you withdraw consent, we will not collect any further data. We are not able to provide further therapy services once this consent is withdrawn.

You have the right to access any personal data we hold at any time. If at any point you believe the information is incorrect, you can request for it to be corrected or deleted. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact Jenni Lindinger, the data controller for the practice, who will investigate the matter. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).