Your Data
Your Data
At The Well, we collect and use your personal information to help provide various services to you and to improve our services.
We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential. However, we may not be able to provide you with a service if you choose not to give us information. The reason for this is we ask for information to ensure that we can offer you a service which is safe and suitable for your needs and without the information we request we may not be able do this.
If you are working or volunteering for The Well, we may use relevant health information to ensure that you are not asked to do inappropriate tasks and to ensure appropriate action can be taken in the case of emergency. For the same reason, contact details are held for a named person, often your next of kin. These details are not used for any other purpose.
When we record and use your personal information we:
- Only access it when we have a good reason
- Only share what is necessary and relevant
- Don’t sell it to anyone
When might we use or share your information
At times we might need to share or use your information without your permission. If we do, we’ll always make sure there is a legal basis for doing so. This could include situations where we have to use or share your information:
- To comply with the law – for example, if a court orders us to share information. This is called a ‘legal obligation’
- To protect someone’s life – for example, if you become ill on our premise we may need to share information with a paramedic. This is called ‘vital interests’
- If we’re concerned about your or someone else’s safety for example if something you have told us makes us think you or someone you know might be at risk of harm
- To carry out our legitimate aims and goals as a charity – for example to create statistics which may be used to apply for charitable funding, in this case your data would be anonymised
How The Well collect your data
We will get your permission by asking you to either:
- Complete a consent form
- Give verbal agreement over the phone or in person
- Give consent via email
If you are a client of The Well for counselling we will ask you to complete a separate form with a data protection policy specific to the counselling service and we have a separate policy that you should refer to regarding your counselling notes. Policy on releasing client notes to a client or a third party
How we store your data and for how long
Some of your information might be kept within our secure email, case management systems and IT Systems. Your information will be stored in line with data protection policy.
We keep information related to paid staff who work for us for six years after you have ceased working for us.
We keep information related to volunteers for up to six years following the end of the year in which you volunteer for us.
If you are attending counselling, we will keep your information for 7 years, because of counselling insurance requirements.
Data is also held for those supporters who have made a financial contribution, in line with HMRC requirements. For example, currently if you make a gift-aided contribution to the charity, your personal information is held for a period of six years.
For areas not specified above, we will keep your data for the shortest time that we are operationally able and no longer than 6 years.
Any paper files we hold are kept securely in locked filing cabinets, once these files reach their destruction date, they will be securely destroyed.
How do we use personal information that we obtain from our website
We, The Well Counselling, a part of Lyttelton Well Ltd are committed to protecting the privacy of anyone using our website and the confidentiality of any information that you provide us with. For more information, please see our website privacy policy at:
Contact The Well about your information
If you would like any information about how your information is collected or used, you can contact us:
Telephone: 07793 505832
Email: info@thewellcounselling.co.uk
Address: The Well Counselling, Church Street, Malvern, Worcestershire, WR14 2AY
Opening Times: Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm
You can contact us to:
- Find out what personal information we hold about you
- Correct your information if it’s incorrect, out of date or incomplete
- Request we delete your information
- Ask us to limit what we do with your data
- Ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold
- Ask us to stop using your information
Further information
- The ICO gives independent advice and guidance about data protection and freedom of information.
- You can contact the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745 from between 9am to 5pm on Monday to Friday.
- You can also find further information on their website: