Privacy Policies

TERMS

For the purposes of clear communication, “our,” “we,” and “us,” refer to this website and/or its services and the terms, “you,” “your,” or, “yours,” refer to visitors to this website. Your use of this website serves as acceptance of the Privacy Policies presented below.

As confidentiality and trust is the foundation of a successful counsellor-client relationship, it is important that you understand we have protections in place to protect any identifying data you provide and that your personal information is safely stored and maintained.

Continued use of this website is considered acknowledgment of and agreement with the terms of the privacy policies, here presented.

COLLECTION

We collect personal information from you that is essential to the function of our services. If personal information is provided to us from a referring medical professional, it is important to us that you have consented to that information being shared by said professional. We are not liable for issues arising from information provided that we had every good-faith understanding was provided with your prior consent. This is a matter that exist between you and the medical practitioner involved in the referral.

All information collected directly by Going Strong Counselling and Psychotherapy, via email, telephonic communications or counselling sessions, is stored on secure, private hard drives and is not accessible via any cloud-based services that may be vulnerable to mass internet data theft.

All information, not collected directly via email, telephonic communications or counselling sessions, such as via intake forms is protected and secured by our practice management software provider, Power Diary. All Power Diary data is backed up hourly to separate storage devices, and an additional separate daily backup is made to AWS S3 storage. Monthly backups are retained for a minimum of 2 years. All data drives and S3 storage is encrypted using secure and industry compliant encryption technology, keeping data at the forefront of security. In addition to this, collection and retention of your personal and information is handled in full compliance with all relevant Australian and International law.

Payment processing details are only obtained via your direct entry of such details into the encrypted and protected Stripe payment processing service. Stripe is certified as a PCI Service Provider – Level 1, which is the highest level of certification available as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. You can read more about Stripe’s security here.

Any information provided by you that is handled by your internet service provider/s, telephone service provider/s or any other communications medium service, that is not affiliated with us, is subject to the privacy policies of the entities providing such services directly to you, and thus do not render us liable for any issues encountered as a result of using these external services.

COOKIES

‘Cookies’ may be used on our web pages for necessary purposes only, so that, for example, information does not have to be repeatedly entered on some occasions, however we will not use them to track your internet use, nor will they be used to advertise to you, either on our web pages or on any external sites.

DISCLOSURE

The security of your personal information is very important to us, and pursuant to our Privacy Policy no information specifically requested and retained by Going Strong Counselling and Psychotherapy will ever be shared with advertisers or third parties, beyond those involved in medical care, legal services or payment processing, and even then only on an ‘as required’ basis.

If you require, at any point in the future, that our services be delivered to you via another provider, we will only provide personal information to such a provider with your express permission. It can also be requested that such information be destroyed following delivery of such services.

FEEDBACK

Should you have any feedback or queries regarding any aspect of the privacy policies, above, please direct these to contact@goingstrongcounselling.com. We value your input and should there be any issues we will work to resolve them, as appropriate, in a timely manner.

This policy may need to be updated periodically, in order to meet our legal obligations.

Last Updated 29/12/2022.