BCU Community Counselling

Contacts: If you are a contact of Birmingham City University’s Community Counselling but not a client, please read the Privacy Notice for Professional Contacts.

Clients: When you attend counselling you provide us with your name, contact details, date of birth and your GP contact details. The legal basis for using this personal information is ‘contract’ (which means the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request to enter into a contract). The content of the counselling and psychotherapy sessions will be processed under Article 9(2)(g) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation as special category data. The relevant condition under the Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1 is Section 17 - Counselling.

Where other lawful bases / special conditions of processing do not apply, we will process your data on the basis of your explicit consent. If we require your consent for any specific use of your personal data, we will collect it at the appropriate time, explaining why we are collecting the data and how we will use it, and you can withdraw this consent at any time.

This often applies for ‘special category data’ which includes information about your health (physical or mental), race, ethnic origin, religious or political beliefs, membership of a trade union and sexual orientation. However, there are other lawful reasons for BCU to process special category data, as mentioned above but also includes for equal opportunities purposes, to prevent the loss of life or to defend legal claims.

We will use your personal information to write notes following the session and update you if there are changes to your appointment. We keep personal information of adult clients for six years from the date of last contact. We keep personal information of clients under the age of 18 for ten years from the date of last contact. We will hold the data of parents or legal guardians for clients under the age of 18 for 10 years from the date of the last contact with the client. When this time has been reached, the personal information is securely destroyed.

Your personal data will only be accessible to staff and students working for within the Community Counselling team. Hard copies of personal information are kept in a secure location and personal data stored electronically is on secure systems within the UK.

We share the personal data with your GP, A&E, Mental Health Teams and safeguarding agencies if we have significant concerns about your or somebody else’s welfare. In addition to the circumstances stated above we will share your personal information if we believe someone’s life is in danger or we believe we are compelled to by law.

You have the right to correct or update your personal data at any time. Please get in touch with your main contact at the University to update your details. If you cannot contact them, please email informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk to update your personal data.

You may have the right to have your personal data deleted, the right to restrict processing, the right to object and / or the right to data portability and you have the right to know about and challenge automated decision making and profiling. Follow the links to find out whether those rights apply in these circumstances. To do any of those things or if you have followed the links but would like clarification, please email informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk.

You have the right to request to see the personal data we hold about you. You can submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) in accordance with the Subject Access Requests (SAR) Procedure.

If you are not content with how we handle your information, please contact our Data Protection Officer to help you in the first instance using the contact details in the introduction to this privacy notice.

If you are dissatisfied with the response, you also have the right to complain directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can find out more about this on the ICO’s complaints website.

• Birmingham City University’s Data Protection Policy and Appropriate Policy Document
• Birmingham City University’s Privacy Notices
• The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) information for members of the public