Terms & Conditions

Terms & Conditions- Tracy Hutchings Therapy

Therapy Agreement

It is important, for us to work together, that we both agree to the following. Please read thoroughly and raise any concerns you have. If you have no concerns, please sign and agree.

Collaboration

• Our work is a partnership, where we work together to achieve the goals you want from therapy.
• If something is not working for you, I invite you to let me know as soon as you notice, so that we can discuss it and address whatever that is.

All Appointments

• If the sessions are being offered remotely, then there is a separate consent form regarding this.
• When I am able to offer face to face sessions again, there will be a new and separate consent form regarding this.
• Appointments are 50 minutes long, unless we agree otherwise.
• If you are late, then please inform me as soon as you are aware, however, you will be expected to pay for your session slot.
• If you have informed me you will be late, then I will be available for the duration of the appointment. Please give me a time you believe you will get there, if you know. If our appointments are face to face, when you arrive please contact me via my mobile (07706076097). If we are working online, then please email me when you are able to attend (contact@tracyhutchings.com).
• If you have not arrived or signed in for your appointment time, if I have not heard from you and have been unable to contact you, then I will wait for 15 minutes before assuming you are not coming. I will then terminate the session and not be available.
• We will book appointments at agreed intervals. If you want to break from therapy for more than 4 weeks then we will discuss this, however, it is likely that I will be unable to hold your slot for you for the duration of this break.

Confidentiality

• I will abide by the GDPR laws (please see below).
• I will protect your data as stated on the following page.
• I have the right to break confidentiality in exceptional circumstances.

Cancellation Policy

• If I am unable to make a session, I will inform you as soon as I’m aware.
• If you are unable to make a session, you will need to give me 48 hours’ notice or you will be required to pay the fee.
• If we are able to rearrange a late cancellation for a mutually convenient time, then I will not charge the late cancellation fee.
• If you do not attend an appointment without cancelling, or you are late, you will still be expected to pay the full fee.
• I will, however, waive or reduce the fee in exceptional circumstances.

Payment

• Payment can be made via either bank transfer or Paypal invoice payment, prior to the session.
• If you pay a reduced fee, then this will be reviewed regularly to make sure that this is still something you need. If your circumstances change, then your fee may need to adjust to reflect this.
• We will only be able to book your next appointment, once you have paid for the previous one. Therefore, please pay prior to your session.

Adverse Weather Conditions (face-to-face)

• If you and/or I are unable to make a session (such as if the Orwell Bridge is closed or snow), then I will, wherever possible, offer an online or remote session so that we can still keep the appointment. If I’m not able, then there will be no fee. If I am able, but you choose not to have an online or remote session, then you will need to pay the fee.

Additional Areas

• If you have not had an appointment booked and you do not respond to my efforts to contact, then I will assume you no longer wish to have therapy with me. You are, however, welcome to recontact me at a later date, if you wish.
• This will be updated via my website. To see updates, please visit the Terms and Conditions page of my website.
• Please ensure to keep a copy of this form, for your records.

General Data Protection Regulation- Tracy Hutchings Therapy

In May 2018, new legislation was brought in around Data Protection. As part of that, I have to advise you of the following;

Data I hold

• All personal data held by me is stored. Personal data is held by me in order to provide you with the services you require and to promote the best possible therapy for my clients.
• I hold personal data from you, given when you completed the initial consultation form. 
• I also keep copies of brief client notes of and written interaction from in between sessions. 
• Data I hold will not be shared. Exceptions to this would be;

• • Sharing it with your consent, by writing to your GP, such as, regarding treatment.
  • Where I have a legal obligation to inform relevant bodies- such as safeguarding concerns or related to acts of terrorism or money laundering.
  • Where I believe there is a significant risk to yourself or another- where I would have to inform relevant bodies (such as GP, or Police).

Additional Information

• My insurance company advises that I keep all my client data for seven years after a client and I have ended. At that point of seven years, all of your remaining personal data held by me will be securely destroyed. I destroy your personal details on closure of therapy.
• You have the right to access the personal data that I hold about you.  You can also ask me to correct any errors.  You also have the right to request that your personal data is erased. 
• If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please do so in writing to me and I shall respond within 28 days.
• I use other companies for some aspects of my business. For links to their websites and privacy policies, please visit the Terms and Conditions page on my website, www.tracyhutchings.com. Other companies I use are;

• • iZettle- For card payments and some invoices.
  • Paypal- For some invoices.
  • ArttDigital- Hosts and manages my website.
  • doxy.me- For online sessions.
  • Santander- For bank transfer payments.

Contact details

My contact details can be found on my website www.tracyhutchings.com

Please also note, that you have the right to complain to ICO if you have any concerns about the way I am handling your personal information.

Medical Information and Consent

GDPR states that I have to gain specific consent to contact third parties.

For some therapies and some conditions it can be important that I am either able to inform your GP about our work, or get permission from your GP to start or continue our work.

The reason for this is that there are many physical conditions that can also produce psychological symptoms, psychological conditions that can cause physical symptoms, or physical conditions that can be exacerbated by psychological changes, so therefore ensuring your GP is aware of our work can be vital. If I write to your GP, or any other doctor we discuss (such as a hospital consultant), then I will ensure to always inform you of this first, and you will be able to see the letter I send, if you wish.

In some cases we will be unable to continue with the work, unless I have liaised with your GP in some form. This is to protect both you and I.

Remote Working Agreement

I am currently offering therapy sessions remotely.  This document will provide you with guidance around how this will work.

Method

• I will be offering sessions online, through video chat.
• Video chat may not work for everyone so, if we try video chat and it does not work, or you do not have the means to do it, we will look at other options, such as telephone sessions, or exchanging emails or texts for the duration of the session. Please be aware that these adaptations are only available for counselling, not other therapies that I offer.

Terms

• The terms of the sessions will remain the same as when we work face-to-face. Please see the ‘Therapy Agreement’ page of the Initial Consultation Form for this information.
• Payment: We will agree your method of payment at the start of our work together.
  • Paypal- I will send a Paypal invoice at the start of the day of your appointment. You will need to pay this prior to your appointment, in order to confirm your next appointment.
  • Bank transfer- This is due prior to our appointment. You can pay up to 48 hours in advance of the session. My bank details are as follows.
    • Account Name: Miss T L Hutchings
    • Business Name: TRACY HUTCHINGS THERAPY
    • Account Number:18331794
    • Sort Code: 09-01-29
    • This is a Santander Business account.

Platform

• I use doxy.me.
• You can use Zoom on a PC, laptop, tablet or phone.
• The room you will need to access is https://doxy.me/tracyhutchingstherapy
• You will enter into a waiting room, and I will grant you access to the room from there. This means it is secure and your session can never been intruded on.

You will need

• A good internet connection.
• Privacy- you need to be able to feel comfortable talking as normal.
• To create or be in a space that feels safe, where you can give therapy your full attention.
• You may wish to use headphones/earphones or a headset to help with confidentiality.
• Something to write on and a pen.
• A drink.
• Anything you normally bring for therapy (such as anything we are working on).
• Please also ensure to be appropriately dressed- as in, dressed as if you were attending my office in person.
• You will need to be located in an appropriate place for therapy (for example, not driving or in public).

 How our will work differ from face-to-face sessions:

• With online working you will need to consider, and be aware of, the following things:
  • At the start of each session, I’ll need you to let me know where you are located for our session. This makes it safer to work online.
  • We will contract what to do if you become distressed or unwell, end the session or the connection goes down. It is very different, as I won’t physically be with you, so ensuring you are safe, is of key importance.
  • I will be in a confidential space, where no one can overhear our therapy. I will also be using a headset.
  • You will be responsible for your own confidentiality in your location. You will need to consider who can overhear you, whether you have any devices that can ‘listen’ (such as an Alexa), who can access your computer and therefore potentially your session link or history.
  • We agree that neither of us will record sessions. If you wish to record any part of any session, please raise this for discussion, so that we can ensure this is done safely. If something is recorded, then the risk of your confidentiality being breached becomes significantly higher, and you will be responsible for the safe keeping of any recording you make.
  • doxy.me is GDPR compliant. You can access their Privacy Policy here https://doxy.me/en/privacy-policy/.
  • Please be aware that all our work will be subject to UK laws.

Troubleshooting

• There are no guarantees that our sessions will be without technical hitches.
• If the connection drops out:
  • If mine drops out, I will keep trying to connect and will contact you to let you know.
  • If yours drops out, please keep trying to connect and text/email me to let me know.
  • If we can’t get it back, then I will contact you to agree how best to finish the session. This is likely to be a telephone call.

Privacy- Online sessions can present some practical challenges to privacy, so if you have any, please let me know, and we will see what options are available and see if we can resolve this.

The Website

This website and its owners take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure the necessary steps are taken to protect the privacy of its users throughout their visiting experience. This website complies to all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.

Use of Cookies

This website uses cookies to better the users experience while visiting the website. Where applicable this website uses a cookie control system allowing the user on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their computer / device. This complies with recent legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s computer / device.

Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computer’s hard drive that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.
Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website on to their computers hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browsers security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors.

This website uses tracking software to monitor its visitors to better understand how they use it. This software is provided by Google Analytics which uses cookies to track visitor usage. The software will save a cookie to your computer’s hard drive in order to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website, but will not store, save or collect personal information. You can read Google’s privacy policy here for further information [ http://www.google.com/privacy.html ].

Other cookies may be stored to your computer’s hard drive by external vendors when this website uses referral programs, sponsored links or adverts. Such cookies are used for conversion and referral tracking and typically expire after 30 days, though some may take longer. No personal information is stored, saved or collected.

Contact & Communication

Users contacting this website and/or its owners do so at their own discretion and provide any such personal details requested at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it is no longer required or has no use, as detailed in the Data Protection Act 1998. Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form to email submission process but advise users using such form to email processes that they do so at their own risk.

This website and its owners use any information submitted to provide you with further information about the products / services they offer or to assist you in answering any questions or queries you may have submitted. This includes using your details to subscribe you to any email newsletter program the website operates but only if this was made clear to you and your express permission was granted when submitting any form to email process. Or whereby you the consumer have previously purchased from or enquired about purchasing from the company a product or service that the email newsletter relates to. This is by no means an entire list of your user rights regarding receiving email marketing material. Your details are not passed on to any third parties.

External Links

Although this website only looks to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website.

The owners of this website cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Social Media Platforms

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.

Please be aware of using social media platforms, and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution regarding their own privacy and personal details. This website nor its owners will ever ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through primary communication channels such as by telephone or email. Please do be aware that if you are a current or prospective client, that I cannot be responsible for protecting your confidentiality if you choose to comment on or share something.

This website may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.