
Who I am
My website address is: https://counsellor.ch. This is the website run by me: Aernout Zevenbergen. I am a counselling psychologist aka counsellor. On this site I present my services and I maintain a blog. I also offer ways for visitors to communicate with me, and to book appointments. My official offices are in Nyon (Rue de l’industire 1, 4e etage, 1260) and Lausanne (Rue du Grand-Pont 18, 6e etage, 1003).
In order to provide you with the best service possible I need to hold your personal contact details and records of your counselling sessions. This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after counselling has ended.
Your privacy is very important to me and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), as well as Swiss Law. I also adhere to the ethical guidelines regarding protecting client privacy and confidentiality set by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and the Swiss Association for Counsellors (SGfB).
My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information
There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data. If you have had counselling with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. If you are currently having counselling or if you are in contact with me to consider counselling, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract. I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately.
How I use your information
I will never use your personal data for any purposes other than the administration of the counselling service that I am providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments. I will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary.
Information Gathering
Initial contact: When you contact me to book your first appointment I will collect some brief information to help me to process your enquiry. This will include your name so that I can book the appointment into my diary and also a contact method, for example an email address or phone number. This information is requested so that you could be informed if I was unable to attend an appointment due to unforeseen circumstances. If you do not want to be contacted under any circumstances you do not need to provide a contact method.
While you are accessing counselling: Your email address or phone number will be used to provide you with written confirmation of your appointment times. Your email address and telephone number will only be used to contact you regarding appointment times unless we have agreed that I will also use your email address to email you information that is relevant to your sessions.
At the beginning of your first appointment I might ask you to complete an intake form containing your name, address, date of birth, contact information and information you deem relevant for me to know to offer you my services. The form is stored in an encrypted electronic format by Hushmail.Com.
Rest assured that what is said in our sessions will be kept confidential. I am a Member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) as well as the Swiss Association of Counsellors (SGfB) and I abide by their professional code of ethics. Confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal or ethical obligations to disclose, for example, if you disclose abuse/neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires me to disclose information.
In the event that confidentiality must be broken I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
Counsellors are required to have regular supervision support so I may discuss our work with my supervisor. This would be done without identifying you and my supervisor is a counsellor who also abides by the applicable codes of ethics regarding confidentiality. As a teacher of counselling students I will also produce vignettes of clients, which are always made up cases, mixed with elements of real cases. No identifying information will ever be shared.
I keep brief notes of our sessions for the purpose of assisting our work together. The notes help me to keep track of the issues that we are working on and they are for my use only. The notes (electronic or written) do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and they are stored securely, and only I have access to them.
After counselling has ended: There are reasons why counsellors are required to keep records after counselling has ended. For example, in the case of financial transactions personal information must be retained for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes. Retaining your notes ensures that I can continue to offer you an efficient service if you make contact after our original work together has ended. Your notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and continue to be stored securely in a locked filing cabinet that only I have access to for seven years after counselling has ended. This time frame adheres with current industry guidelines. Seven years after counselling has ended your notes will be confidentially destroyed.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Third party recipients of personal data
I share a limited amount of personal data with third parties in order to provide services to you and to fulfil legal obligations in respect of tax and accounting purposes. For example, my accountant is permitted access to my invoices. Where I have contracted with a supplier to carry out tasks I have carefully selected which organisations I work with. I state that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted. I will never pass on your contact details to any third party organisations for the purposes of sales, marketing or research.
I work with the following providers to offer you my services:
eTermin: Provider of a tool to book appointments. You can find their privacy policy here.
Bexio: Provider of accounting tools to help with invoicing and accounting. Their privacy policy is here.
Zoom: Provider of online web meetings. Here is their privacy policy.
Hushmail: provider of my encrypted and secured contact form, as well as the Intake Form and the Informed Consent form. Here is their privacy policy.
Data security
I take the security of the data that I hold about you very seriously. My email account is password protected and mobile phones and laptops used to respond to your emails are password protected and have anti-virus software.
Website visitors
By accessing the website, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this privacy notice. Should you choose to contact me using the contact form on the website none of the data that you supply will be stored by the website or passed to any third party data processors. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to me over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by local computers and devices.
The website uses cookies and Google Analytics. Almost all websites use cookies which are small files that get put on your computer by websites as you surf them. These cookies can store lots of information which can have privacy implications. Google Analytics is a service provided by Google that gathers anonymous data on how people are using websites and then provides visitor statistics, details of page views etc. This service is used by many website owners as the data helps website owners to improve their websites.
Some page elements are embedded from trusted third parties in order to provide you with Interactive Maps. This makes the website more helpful to you as a site visitor however most of these come with their own cookies. This applies to Google Maps. I do not control these cookies so I cannot guarantee what they do. In many cases the cookies are used to generate identical information to Google Analytics and indeed use Google Analytics, so opting-out of Google Analytics will also opt you out of these cookies too. You can opt out of Google analytics and other Google services here – http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and https://www.google.com/dashboard/.
Your rights
The right to request access to the personal information that I store and process about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information held or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask me to restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether in some circumstances. If you would like to make a request relating to any of the rights above, please send a request in writing by contacting me. Please be aware that in certain situations counsellors may be unable to comply with the above requests. For example, if compelled to retain the records by a court of law. Please also be aware that there may be a charge for complying with a request if it is deemed to be excessive in nature.
Queries
‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person or organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is Aernout Zevenbergen. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or the way in which I handle your personal information you can contact me.
Complaints
If you have a complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Changes to privacy notice
This privacy notice may be updated from time to time, so please check occasionally for any updates.
Current version: 18 January 2025