Just Imagine Counselling cares about your privacy and is committed to ensuring the fair and appropriate handling of your personal information.
This Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal information, whether you are an existing client or you are simply reviewing counselling services that we offer.
Just Imagine Counselling applies privacy principles set out in Australia’s Privacy Act 1988. The privacy principles guide how we collect and manage your personal information, including (but not limited to):
- being transparent about our personal information handling practices
- limiting collection of personal information to that which is necessary for our functions
- understanding our business purposes, and restricting our use and disclosure of personal information in that regard
- taking reasonable steps to keep the personal information we have secure.
Personal information:
Personal information is information that identifies you (or could reasonably lead to you being identified). The types of personal information we hold depends on our relationship with you. Generally, we collect the following information:
- New Clients
Just Imagine Counselling requires the following information to be able to register you as a new client and offer counselling services:
- Name
- Phone Number
This information is collected if you wish to register as a new client of Just Imagine Counselling. Clients are able to book sessions and view invoices online.
- Existing Clients
Just Imagine Counselling collects a range of personal information when providing counselling services to you, which may include:
- Date of birth and address
- Medicare details
- Account related information
- Appointment information
- Counselling records, which may include:
- Physical, mental or psychological health
- Your opinions or views
- A disability of an individual
- Sexual preference or gender identity
- Political or religious views
- Criminal history
We note that some or all components included in your counselling records may be considered sensitive information under the Privacy Act 1988.
Collecting personal information:
We collect personal information when you:
- register an online account with us
- request us to contact you
- fill out a form (online or on paper)
- communicate with us (by phone or email)
- answer questions that we ask verbally
- have conversations with us during counselling sessions
- pay an invoice
- contact us via social media
Just Imagine Counselling may also collect your personal information when you complete an enquiry or contact form through the Yellow Pages website or the My Community Directory website. Please be aware that personal information supplied to us through these providers becomes captured by that outlet’s privacy policy. You are always welcome to contact us directly via the details available on our webpage.
We understand that in our interactions with you, we collect a range of personal and sensitive information and take care to handle your information appropriately.
Consent:
Consent is an important privacy concept that applies to our collection of your personal information and how personal information is handled by Just Imagine Counselling.
Sensitive Information
When providing counselling services to you, Just Imagine Counselling may collect your health information and information regarding a disability of an individual, sexual preference or gender identity, political or religious views or criminal history. This information is considered “sensitive information”.
At the time of registration, Just Imagine Counselling requests your permission to collect this information about you, including in your counselling record.
Personal Information of Children under age 16
If Just Imagine Counselling is required to collect personal information from a child under the age of 16 years, we will request permission from a parent or guardian.
Accuracy:
Before we use your personal information, we may double check with you to make sure it is accurate, complete and up to date. We encourage you to update your personal information with us, especially if some time has passed since past interactions with us.
What we do with personal information, and who we give it to:
We use and disclose your personal information to:
- provide counselling services to you
- submit relevant details to Medicare or other authorising authority
- communicate with you
- respond to enquiries
- register an online account for you
- send you invoices for services provided
- investigate and respond to a complaint made by you
Just Imagine Counselling will not sell or share your personal information with any other party, unless:
- We have your express permission (e.g. to provide a written report to another professional, to refer you to another service or to discuss your information with another heath care provider).
- There is a lawful requirement for us to do so (e.g. under a court order).
- We consider that there is a risk of serious harm to you, another person or the public.
- We consider that a crime or abuse against a child has or will be committed. Whilst we are not legally required to do this, Just Imagine Counselling considers this to be an ethical obligation and will report serious abuse of children to appropriate authorities.
- You have told us that you or another person has or is planning to commit a crime.
Just Imagine Counselling will never sell your personal information to any other party.
We further note, Just Imagine Counselling will not disclose the mental health information of clients that are involved in the Defence Forces to any other party. Further, at this point in time, we do not provide any information to Medicare or other government agencies. For an agency to access personal information of any clients (including those involved with the defence forces), a court order would be required.
Keeping your personal information safe:
We securely manage and dispose of personal information whether it is held in hard copy or electronic format and whether it is stored on-site or in ‘the cloud’.
Your personal information and counselling records will be kept for seven years after your last session, or if you are less than 18 years of age, they will be kept until you are 25 years. After this time, your records will be securely and permanently destroyed.
Just Imagine Counselling engages third party service providers to assist with our business, and we subscribe to social media, as follows:
Third party service providers:
We use contracted third party service providers in a limited capacity to help us manage aspects of our business, such as managing our website (including the ‘registration’ form you’ll find there), sending you invoices and processing credit card payments.
Some of the personal information collected by us may, in turn, be managed in a local or off-shore digital environment (‘the cloud’) by our service providers. It is a condition of our agreements with these providers that we remain in control of what happens to the personal information they manage on our behalf and that it is kept secure.
Social media:
Just Imagine Counselling operates a Facebook page, and those with an interest may choose to engage with us using that medium.
Just Imagine Counselling only ‘pushes’ information (about our counselling services) out via Facebook. We never, ever, share details about you on Facebook, and we do not ‘tag’ you in anything that we post (you may, however, choose to ‘tag’ yourself or otherwise share information about yourself in that environment).
Before you send us information via Facebook (or any social media accounts), please be aware that personal information supplied to us through or posted by us on any social media outlet becomes captured by that outlet’s privacy policy. As such, you may choose not to share your personal information with us via that medium.
Information Security
Protection of personal information from unauthorised access and disclosure is a priority. Any concerns about the security of personal information held by us should be reported to us without delay, by email: lynne.weier@justimaginecounselling.com.au or telephone: 0439 635 833.
Accessing and changing personal information we have about you:
If we hold personal information about you, we are happy to tell you what it is. We will not, however, tell someone else what personal information we hold about you (unless you permit us or there is a lawful ability or requirement for us to do so). Just Imagine Counselling will not allow an individual to access a couples counselling information without a court order or the permission of all parties involved in the counselling session.
If you think the general personal information (e.g. name, phone, email) we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, please let us know. We are happy to correct it. Just Imagine Counselling will not however correct counselling session notes. This information becomes ‘locked’ after your session notes are recorded. The session notes cannot be ‘corrected’ or changed, as changes to a counselling record could materially affect the accuracy of that record.
Anonymity:
Just Imagine Counselling may provide our counselling services to you pseudonymously. When providing your name, you may use a nickname or other name. We do however, require an accurate email and phone number to be able to contact you and provide online or telephone counselling services.
Cookies:
Our website (www.justimaginecounselling.com.au) uses cookies. A cookie is a small piece of data that our website asks your browser to store on your PC, laptop, smartphone or other device. Cookies act like signposts, markers or tiny pieces of memory that enable us to give you the best experience possible when visiting our website.
Are cookies a risk to my privacy?
No. The cookies deployed by the Just Imagine Counselling website are a combination of plain and encrypted text stored on your device and, when you access justimaginecounselling.com.au, they allow the website to recognise you and provide you with specific content or services. They cannot replicate (i.e., make copies of themselves), execute pre-programmed functions, browse your device directories or otherwise fish for or seek out your personal information. The files are unable to scan, copy, read or retrieve your personal information.
Just Imagine Counselling does not use cookies to track your movement from our website to other websites. Except Analytics, which you may opt out of (please see information about how to do this below), we do not allow cookies to be used by third parties for advertising or other commercial purposes.
Do I have to allow the use of cookies?
No. However, the use of cookies by Just Imagine Counselling supports your use of our website, and disabling our ability to deploy them may prevent you from using our site with ease.
If you wish to disable, delete, prevent or clear cookies, you can follow the instructions available on your web browser.
Analytics:
As part of the services supplied by our website management provider, Just Imagine Counselling uses Analytics to gather anonymous information about visitors to our website. This helps us monitor and improve the website and improve your user experience.
Analytics uses cookies and JavaScript code to gather information about how visitors use our website; such as, the number of visitors we receive, the type of web browser used and which of our pages were viewed.
You can choose not to allow the collection of your information for the use of analytics by opting out of Google Analytics and opting out of MyAnalytics.
Updates to the Privacy Policy
We may update this document from time to time to ensure that our personal information handling practices are correctly reflected. This may occur without notice to our clients or website visitors; however, we will always post a “last revised” date for your information. If updates could potentially impact you, we will make these changes known to you by publishing a banner on our website.
Any questions or concerns?
If you have a question about our Privacy Policy or a concern about how we handle personal information, please contact us via:
Email: lynne.weier@justimaginecounselling.com.au
Phone: 0439 635 833
Last revised: 18 January 2022