Relate West Sussex Policies

---

No matter which type of counselling you are accessing you will need to have an initial consultation. The initial assessment takes place with one of our qualified counsellors, and ensures we are the right service for you and that we provide you with the appropriate service. Please note that your counsellor for ongoing sessions may not be the one conducting your initial assessment.

Before your sessions can start, you must complete our pre- counselling forms which will be sent to you via email. Without completing these forms the first session cannot take place. 

We also ask for counselling appointments to be paid at least 48 hours in advance. 

We require 48 hours notice of cancellation. If you cancel after this you will still be charged for the session.

Privacy Statement

At Relate, we are committed to keeping your personal information safe and being clear about how we collect your data, how we store it and what we do with it.

Relate West Sussex is registered under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 as a data controller with the number Z9815253. Full details of this listing can be seen on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

This privacy notice describes how we use and keep your personal information safe.

If you have any queries about our Privacy Notice, please get in touch with our data team:

By email: reception@relatesussex.org

By post: 1-2 Gleneagles Court, The Orchard, Brighton Road, Crawley, RH10 6AD

What information do we collect about you?

Information you give to us directly

We will collect and store information that you give us when you do the following things on our website(s):

• Register for WebChat
• Register for an event
• Register for a workshop, course or training
• Make an enquiry
• Complete a survey
• Sign up to support a campaign
• Support our work through a donation
• Fund raise on our behalf
• Tell us your story (for example, as a media case study)
• Give us feedback or make a complaint
• Apply for a job or work with us
• Register as a volunteer
• Enter into a contract with us
• Become a client
• Are photographed or filmed (for example, at a Relate event)

Information you give to us indirectly

• We store data about your visits to our website, for example, your location data or IP address 
• We may also collect and store your personal information if you interact with us on our social media channels. This will depend on your own privacy settings on these individual channels, so make sure you check these first.

We may collect and store the following types of personal information: name, email address, date of birth, mobile or telephone number, relationship status, gender, sexual orientation, financial details, credit/debit card information, details about your education and career.

Certain types of personal information are recognised by data protection law as being more ‘sensitive’. Therefore, information such as sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, religious or political opinion, data concerning your health (mental or physical) or your sex life fall into this category.

Relate will only collect sensitive information like this where it informs the provision of the service to you. Whenever we do this, we will state clearly at the time, why this information is required. We may also gather sensitive personal information if you choose to share your experiences with us for a case study, but we will only do this with your explicit consent.

If you’re a young person aged 13 or under

You must get the permission of your parent/guardian before providing Relate with any personal information.

How do we use your personal information?

We will use your personal information to do the following:

• Provide you with information, products or  services you’ve requested or that we feel might be of interest to you.
• Process one-off or regular donations and to claim Gift Aid.
• Make our marketing campaigns more targeted and relevant to potential clients and donors; we will only send you marketing information if you have given us specific consent to do.
• Respond to direct requests where you contact us with a query - we will use your personal information to respond.
• Carry out general administrative tasks  like dealing with complaints and feedback, essential record-keeping.
• Transact: we will use your personal information to take payments from you when processing orders and payments for goods and services.
• Keep you safe: in the event that we reasonably think you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse.
• Conduct polls, surveys and market research: we may invite you to take part so that we can improve our website, services and/or strategic development.
• Monitoring and evaluation: we use your personal information to inform and develop our service delivery.
• Improve your experience of our website, so that we may offer you a more user-friendly navigation of our website.
• Process applications to work at Relate: for example, if you fill in an application form or send us your CV or send  us information speculatively in respect of possible contract opportunities.
• Supporter profiling and analysis: we will use your personal information to help us better target communications, so that you are more likely to receive communications relevant to your interests.

For how long will we keep your personal information?

At Relate, we are committed to retaining your personal information for no longer than necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was first collected. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Relate may hold some types of data for up to seven years.

For example, in the case of financial transactions like donations and purchases, we will keep your personal information for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes, which could be anything up to six years after a transaction has taken place.

Do you share my information with anyone else?

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was obtained in the first place. We won’t share it with any third parties and you won’t receive any communications from other organisations.

However, there are two very explicit ways in which your data might be shared:

• In the event that we use third party suppliers to help deliver our services, fundraising activities and  campaigns.
• Where we are legally bound to disclose your personal information, for example, to further criminal investigation or to keep you safe if we believe you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse. 

Keeping your personal information safe

We have both digital and operational safeguards to make sure your data is secure at Relate. Access to information is reviewed on a regular basis and limited to those people who actually need to access it and are assigned the permission to do so.

All Relate online webforms are protected by secure end-to-end encryption. Where we pass highly sensitive data over the internet such as credit or debit card details, Relate uses TLS to encrypt data between the client and our partners.

Relate is PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant and uses PCI compliant providers to collect this data on our behalf; we don’t store this data on our own systems.

There are, however, inherent risks to passing information over public networks and Relate cannot 100% guarantee the security of data handled in this way.

Relate's web servers are located in England and Ireland.

Your rights and managing your own data

You have the right to request access to the personal information that Relate stores and processes about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information we hold or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether.

We will not charge you for either considering or complying with a request unless it is deemed to be excessive in nature. We will ask you for proof of identity and upon this being successfully verified, you are entitled to obtain the following information about your personal information:

• The purposes of the collection, processing, use and storage of your personal data.
• The source(s) of the personal information, if it was not obtained from you.
• The categories of personal data stored about you.
• The recipients (or categories of recipients) to whom your personal data has been or may be transmitted,  along with the location of those recipients.
• The envisaged period of storage for your personal data or the rationale for determining the storage period.
• The use of any automated decision-making  and/or profiling

If you’d like to make a request relating to any of the rights above, please send a request by emailing data.protection@relate.org.uk. Or if you prefer, you can make the request in writing to: Data Protection Officer, Relate, The Gables, 3 St Mary's Road, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 5HL.

Changes to our privacy policy

Relate’s Case Management System is hosted in Canada as from March 2024. Canada forms part of the EU and UKs register of Adequate nations, meaning they have a data privacy law appropriately similar to the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018.

At Relate Sussex, we are committed to continuous improvement in our services and organisational structure. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us maintain and enhance our standards.

Complaints Procedure  

We take all complaints seriously and aim to address them promptly and fairly.  

• Logging Complaints: All complaints are recorded in our Complaints Log.  
• Acknowledgement: We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint promptly.  
• Response Time: You will receive a formal reply within 15 days of us receiving your complaint.  
• Investigation Process:Alleged breaches of the Competency Framework will be thoroughly investigated. Administrative complaints, while not aligned with the Competency Framework, will also be handled diligently.  
• Outcome Communication: Following the investigation, we will send you a tailored response using our Complaint Response Letter template.  
• Right to Appeal: If you are unsatisfied with the outcome, you may appeal the decision within 15 days of receiving our response. Appeals should be addressed to the Centre Manager.  
• Review and Improvement: Complaints provide us with opportunities to evaluate and improve our processes and services.  
• Time Limit: Please note that we are unable to consider complaints older than three years.  

After Service Feedback

Your feedback following your sessions is an essential part of our ongoing improvement efforts.  

• Feedback Forms: After Service Forms are sent to clients within 48 hours of their final session. 
• Review Process: Completed forms are reviewed and logged by our team.  
• Addressing Concerns: Any concerns raised are addressed promptly.
• Acknowledging Positives: Positive feedback is shared with individual counsellors to recognise their contributions and maintain high standards.  

We thank you for your trust in Relate West Sussex and value your input as we strive to deliver the best possible service.