Privacy policy


This is the privacy policy, cookie policy and GDPR compliance statement of “The Mothering Psychologist". In this document, “we”, “our”, or “us” refer to “The Mothering Psychologist”

We are company number 700815 registered in Ireland.

Introduction: This is a notice to inform you of our policy about all information that we record about you. It sets out conditions under which we may process any information that we collect from you, or that you provide to use. It covers information that could identify you (“personal information”) and information that could not. In the context of the law and this notice “process” means collect, store, transfer, use or otherwise act on information.

You must read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override We regret that if there are one or more points below with which you are not happy, we will not be in a position to provide services to you at this time.

We take seriously the protection of your privacy and confidentiality. We understand that all visitors to our website are entitled to know that their personal data will not be used for any purpose unintended by them, and will not accidentally fall into the hands of a third party. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of all information you provide to use, and hope that you reciprocate.

Our policy complies with the Data Protection Act 2018 (Act) accordingly incorporating the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The law requires us to tell you about your rights and obligations to you in regards to the processing and control of your personal data. We do this now, by requesting that you read the information provided at www.knowyourprivacyrights.org

Who are we? Who is the Data Controller? “The Mothering Psychologist” is a private provider or children’s, adolescent’s, young adult’s, and adult's psychology services in Ireland, including but not limited to assessment, intervention, holistic sleep coaching, parent support and training. Dr. Emma Bagnall is the data controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "The Mothering Psychologist", "we", "us", or "our" in this privacy notice). Our phone number is 087 4017513 and email address is info@themotheringpsychologist.com. For all data matters contact Dr. Emma Bagnall at info@themotheringpsychologist.com. This statement relates to our privacy practices.

Third-party links outside of our control
This webiste may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these thrid-party website and are not responsible for their privacy statements.

When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Where is the location of processing? “The Mothering Psychologist” offers clinic-based appointments and telehealth appointments using videoconferencing software. Personal data is processed at the home office of our Administrator which is in Co. Westmeath.

What personal data do we process? How do we process data?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you. You may give us your identity, contact and financial data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you apply for our products or services, create an account on our website, subscribe to our service or publications and/or request marketing to be sent to you.

We process the following data: Names (of parents/guardians and children), addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and dates of birth. We process information relating to the health (physical and mental) and education of the young people attending our service. We also process text submitted via forms on our website or third party appointment scheduling software (Jotform, Mailchimp, Shopify, Podia) which may or may not include names, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. We also process IP addresses. We collect information in manual/paper and electronic formats. We do not record telephone calls or online Telehealth sessions.

Credit/debit card details and associated cardholders names and addresses submitted via “The Mothering Psychologist” website are processed directly by Shopify (online store), PayPal (card payment processor), and Podia (online learning hub). You may be sent links to complete payment via e-mail and/or SMS.

“The Mothering Psychologist” does not store credit/debit card information. At the point of payment, you are transferred to a secure page on the website of PayPal/Stripe/SumUp or some other reputable payment service provider. That page may be branded to look like a page on our website, but It is not controlled by us.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you fail to provide personal data:
Where we need to collect your personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

Our email (info@themotheringpsychologist.com) is hosted by Gmail via GSuite; you can read about Gmail and GDPR compliance here:
https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance/#?modal_active=none

Our online sessions take place via Zoom (video-conferencing software). You can read about Zoom and GDPR here: https://zoom.us/gdpr

When you contact us, whether by telephone, through our website or by e-mail, we collect the data that you have given us in order to reply with the information you need.

We record your request and our reply in order to increase the efficiency of our business.

We keep personally identifiable information associated with your message, such as your name and email address so as to be able to track our communications with you to provide a high quality service.

Why do we process personal data?
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Performance of contract: this means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Legitimate interest: this means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/produce and the most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by email info@themotheringpsychologist.com

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation: this means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contact us at info@themotheringpsychologist.com.

It is necessary to process data as part of the process of provide psychology services to the young person, adult or parent. This includes, but is not limited to booking appointments, conducting phone consultations and telehealth sessions, carrying out assessments and interventions, making onward referrals, discussing a client’s case with parents/legal guardians and other professionals (as appropriate). Additionally data may be processed for administrative purposes, including but not limited to invoicing and day-to-day administration and financial activities (e.g. accounting, end-of-year tax returns) that are within our legitimate interests.

Sometimes you might give your consent implicitly, such as when you send us a message by e-mail to which you would reasonably expect us to reply, or when you leave a voicemail and you would reasonably expect a return phone call.

Who do we share data with and why? Data processed by “The Mothering Psychologist” remains confidential and is not shared with individuals, companies or organisations except under the following circumstances:

Legal reasons - We are subject to the law like everyone else. Sometimes, we must process your information in order to comply with a statutory obligation. For example, we may be required to give information to legal authorities if they request or if they have the proper authorisation such as a search warrant or court order. This may include your personal information.

Information sharing – with your consent, we may share personal information pertaining to the younger person when we have the written consent of their parents or legal guardians to do so. Information sharing in this way will only take place in the case that it is in the best interest of the young person and the psychology services provided to them. For example, we may request or disclose information with the young person’s educational placement or other professionals involved in their care.

Marketing
We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

Promotional offers from us: We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decided which products, services and offers may be relevant to you. You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us, or if you provided us with your details when you entered a competition or registered for a promotion and, in each case you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

How do we store and protect data?
We have put in place appropriate security measuers to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contracts and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Physical/paper-based data and electronic data is stored at our registered address and the home office of our Administrator, Dr. Emma Bagnall. Physical/paper-based data is stored in lockable filing cabinets. Electronic data and the devices storing this information are encrypted and have Firewalls enabled. We have BitDefender Security installed and enabled on all devices which may be used to process data. All data is accessible only by our Administrator, Dr. Emma Bagnall. We do not store client information on cloud servers.

How long do we retain data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purpsoes fo satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

Psychological assessment and intervention data (special data retention requirements): We retain data in line with data retention guidelines provided by the HSE. We retain all electronic and/or paper/physical data relating to the young person until their 25th birthday or until their 26th birthday if the young person was 17 at the conclusion of treatment, or 8 years after death.

Financial data for the current year and previous six financial years is retained. All data is destroyed under confidential conditions upon expiration of the retention period.

Consent: When making a referral to “The Mothering Psychologist”, consent must be provided by parents or legal guardians to process the referral in the case of a child. Prior to the initial appointment, parents/legal guardians of young people under 18 years of age are provided with a Consent Form to proceed with assessment/intervention which must be signed before services commence. Young people and adults aged 18+ are required to sign their own Consent Form. They may be required to provide additional consent for the involvement of their parents/legal guardians if appropriate (e.g. in the case of collecting early developmental history). Individual consent forms are also provided with regard to obtaining and sharing information as described in “Who do we share data with and why” above.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete you data: see Your legal rights below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Cookies
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.

Change of Purpose

We will only use your data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us at info@themotheringpsychologist.com

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Data may be processed outside the European Union: Our website is hosted in Ireland. We may also use outsourced services in countries outside the European Union from time to time in other aspects of business (e.g. Gmail, GSuite, SumUpp, PayPal, Podia, Mailchimp etc). Accordingly, data obtained within Ireland or any other country could be processed outside the European Union. It is our understanding that these companies are GDPR compliant and have subscribed to the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield and/or EU Model Contract Clauses (MCCs, also known as Standard Contractual Clauses or SCCs) which ensures that EU citizens are protected under EU data protection laws. You can read more about Privacy Shield here: https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome.

Your legal rights
Unless subject to an exemption under the data protection laws, you have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

• The right to request a copy of the personal data which we hold about you;
• The right to request that we correct any personal data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date;
• The right to request your personal data is erased where it is no longer necessary to retain such data;
• The right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time, where consent was the lawful basis for processing your data;
• The right to request that we provide you with your personal data and where possible, to transmit that data directly to another data controller (known as the right to data portability), where applicable i.e. where our processing is based on consent or is necessary for the performance of our contract with you or where we process your data by automated means;
• The right, where there is a dispute in relation to the accuracy or processing of your personal data, to request a restriction is placed on further processing;
• The right to object to our processing of personal data, where applicable i.e. where processing is based on our legitimate interests (or in performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority); direct marketing or processing for the purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics).

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above please contact Dr. Emma Bagnall by email at info@themotheringpsychologist.com

No fee required - with some exceptions
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However we may charge a reasonable admin fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not dislcosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or if you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Changes to this notice and your duty to inform us of changes
This version was last updated on 27th June 2023 and historic versions can be obtained by contacting us. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current.

Complaints about how your data is processed: When we receive a complaint, we record all the information you have given to us. We use that information to resolve your complaint. If your complaint reasonably requires us to contact some other person, we may decide to give to that other person some of the information contained in your complaint. We do this as infrequently as possible, but it is a matter for our sole discretion as to whether we do give information, and if we do, what that information is. We may also compile statistics showing information obtained from this source to assess the level of service we provide, but not in a way that could identify you or any other person. If you are concerned about how your personal information is processed by “The Mothering Psychologist”, please contact us by emailing info@themotheringpsychologist.com

Compliance with the law: Our privacy policy has been compiled so as to comply with the law of every country or legal jurisdiction in which we aim to do business. If you think it fails to satisfy the law of your jurisdiction, we should like to hear from you. However, ultimately it is your choice as to whether you wish to use our website.

Queries, Requests or Concerns
To exercise all relevant rights, queries or complaints in relation to this policy or any other data protection matter between you and us, please in the first instance contact our Data Controller, Dr. Emma Bagnall by email at info@themotheringpsychologist.com