Personal information

This is about how we store and use the personal information about you that we obtain in the normal course of our work with you. It should be read alongside the Privacy Notice on our Downloads page which explains the kinds of information we are likely to ask you for.

We have a duty to make sure that we only ask you for personal information that is relevant to our role and the work we are doing; that we only record and keep information about you if we need it to do our work well; and that we store your personal information safely so that others can't access it.

The law requires us to make clear which of the permissable lawful bases for data storage and processing we believe applies to the work that we do. In our case it is necessary to process personal information because you enter into a contract with us when you ask us to provide you, or a child for whom you have legal responsibility, with advice and support. Obtaining, processing and storing personal information is therefore a necessary part of the work we do as without it we would not be able to provide the services that we offer.

1. How do we decide whether we should keep a record of your personal information, and how it should be stored?

1.1 Good practice suggests that psychologists and other similar professionals should retain records of their involvement with children and young people for at least 10 years, or until that person reaches the age of 25. The Health and Care Professions Council, for example, expects to be able to investigate complaints effectively up to 5 years from the last contact with a psychologist, on the assumption that a sufficient quantity and quality of information will have been retained over that period. This means retaining information for long periods of time; it is our responsibility to ensure this information is stored securely and not accessed by unauthorised persons during this time. If we did not retain information in this way a number of difficulties could arise, such as an inability on our part to re-establish an effective working relationship if a young person were to be refered, or refer themself, to us again after a long period of no contact. Or we might be unable to explain or defend our professional decisions and actions if an accusation of professional negligence or other misconduct were made against us in the future, for example if a child we had worked with wished to question as an adult the support and advice they had previously been given.

1.2 Your personal details will initially be held securely on paper forms and written notes only until we have produced our written reports. At this time we destroy our contemporaneous notes and other materials generated during the assessment and we retain only digital copies of our assessment reports, and any notes that may be required at a later date if a circumstance such as those described in 1.1 above should arise. Digital files are held on encrypted drives which are physically separate from the computers we use. We do not use ‘cloud’ storage. We send paper copies of our reports to clients and to key individuals by negotiation with clients themselves, but we only retain digital copies of these reports. Some clients request reports as email attachments and we provide these as digitally signed pdf files. If you keep a copy of the report we send you, you have a copy of the only data we retain about you once that report has been written.

2. How might your personal information be used?

2.1 Once we hold it, we don’t make your personal information available to anyone without your permission unless the law allows or compels us to do so. The reports we write are not copied by us to other professionals without your knowledge and permission. Under exceptional circumstances it is possible that a court could require us to divulge information that we have initially refused to share. Such situations are so rare that it is not possible to give specific guidance on how we will respond, except to say that our default position, as with many other similar professions, is that we will not share information under those circumstances unless we are compelled to.

2.2 If we anonymise your personal information, the law does allow us to share it in certain ways with others. This is because the information is no longer considered to be personal to you, as long as the anonymisation has been done thoroughly. We might discuss the work we have done with you with other professionals in order to get their advice and to check that we are drawing reasonable conclusions and making good decisions. This is usually called supervision and it is common for professionals in health, care and education roles to ask for advice from their colleagues in this way. If we do discuss the work we have done with you in this way we will not pass on personal information about you that would allow another professional to identify you. We might also show the psychologist’s report we have written about you to other psychologists in a face to face meeting, in order to get feedback from them on the quality of the report. These psychologists are bound by the same rules around confidentiality and data protection that we observe and they do not keep a copy of any of your personal information.

2.3 We are sometimes asked to write or talk about the work we do in order to support the learning or training of other professionals. This could take the form of a case history or a story told during a training course or a careers advice presentation, or an article written in a professional journal or magazine. Occasionally we take photographs of children's drawings, with their permission, and may use these as part of a case history presentation. Under these circumstances we may refer to the work we have done with a number of different people but thoroughly anonymise the comments we make so that none of them would be identifiable. We may also take the extra step of altering some of the details of the work we have done, as well as removing personal information, in order to further conceal the identity of the person we are talking about.

2.4 We don't pass your data or make it available, even when anonymised, to third parties for marketing, advertising, or for any commercial purpose.

3. We have a duty of care towards the children and adults we work with.

3.1 We would have to disregard any promises of confidentiality made to them or their parents/carers if we thought a child, young person or adult was in any kind of danger and would be harmed, or cause harm, if we didn’t disclose some information about them or intervene in some way. Under these circumstances the need to keep someone safe from harm over-rides the duty to keep information about them confidential.

If you have any questions or concerns about this information, please contact us. Unless you have told us otherwise, we assume that when you give consent to us working with you, you have consented to the use of your personal information in the ways described above, all of which are permitted by the Data Protection Act 2018.

Reviewed January 2025