Privacy policy

The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for Live Your Story Counselling & Disability Services and its website: http://liveyourstory.com.au

Confidentiality and exceptions

The privacy of all communications between a client and a therapist is protected by law, and the therapist can only release information about you to a third party with your written permission. However, there are a few exceptions. In most legal proceedings, you have the right to prevent your therapist from providing any information about your treatment. In some proceedings involving child custody and those in which your emotional condition is an important issue, a judge may ask for your therapist’s testimony, if he/she determines that the issues demand it. There are some situations in which your therapist is legally obligated to take action to protect others from harm.

For example, if your therapist believes that a child, elderly person, or disabled person is being abused, he/she must file a report with the appropriate state agency. If he/she believes that you are threatening serious bodily harm to others, he/she is required to take protective actions. These actions may include notifying the potential victim, contacting the police, or seeking hospitalization for the client. If you threaten to harm yourself dangerously, your therapist may be obligated to seek hospitalisation for you or to contact your family members or others who can help provide protection.

These situations have rarely occurred in our practice. If a similar situation occurs, your therapist will make every effort to fully discuss it with you before taking any action. While this written summary of exceptions to confidentiality should prove helpful in informing you about potential problems, it is important that you discuss any questions or concerns that you may have with your therapist before the end of the first session.

Information gathered prior to and during the sessions is strictly confidential and will be stored securely for 5 years. After this time, it may be destroyed. Information (NOT including name, address and date of birth or any information that may specifically identify a client) may be used for research purposes, professional writing or teaching of hypnosis, and for further development of research study. 

Information gathering and use of information
Our web server software generates logfiles of the IP addresses of computers that access this website and of what files they access. These web server logs are retained on a temporary basis and then deleted completely from our systems. We also may ask our visitors to provide information about themselves. We may use cookies to maintain a user's identity between web sessions.

We do not provide any personally identifiable information we gather or develop about our visitors to any third parties for any purpose. We use your IP address and files you access to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our Web site by identifying: (1) which parts of our site are most heavily used, and (2) which portion of our audience comes from within the network. We also use this information to tailor site content to user needs and to generate aggregate statistical reports. At no time do we disclose site usage by individual visitors.

Consent
By engaging us or registering your details on our Website or by email or telephone, and/or using the Website or completing a client consent form or otherwise engaging our services, you consent to us and our staff collecting, using and disclosing your personal information (including Health Information) for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy. 

Data security and quality:
We will take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we collect and hold from misuse, loss and interference and from unauthorised access and modification, and to make sure it is accurate, complete and up-to-date when we collect, use or disclose it. To assist us, please ensure you provide us with your correct details and let us know if you believe the information we have about you is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading (and we will take reasonable steps to correct the information). We may take steps to destroy or permanently de-identify information when it is no longer needed for any purpose for which it may be used or disclosed. We may retain and use de-identified information.

Cookies

The website may use “cookies”; technology to store data on your computer using the functionality of your browser. Many websites do this because cookies allow the website publisher to do useful things like finding out whether the computer has visited the site before. You can modify your browser to prevent cookie use – but if you do this our service (and our Website) may not work properly. The information stored in the cookie is used to identify you. This enables us to operate an efficient service and to track the patterns of behaviour of visitors to the Website.

Access, correction and complaints
You can request, and we will provide you with access to, any personal information we hold about you (including any Health Information) (subject to any applicable legal exceptions). Please also let us know if you have any concerns or complaints about the way we are handling your personal information so we can address them. Requests should be submitted by email to admin@liveyourstory.com.au Where our records are found to be inaccurate, we will promptly rectify any inaccuracies on the basis of the further information you provide.

Transfer in certain circumstances
If there is a sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of substantial assets, reorganisation or liquidation of us, then we may transfer, sell or assign personal information (other than Health Information) collected to one or more relevant third parties. Subject always to your consent, we may also transfer any Health Information we hold about you to your counsellor in the event your counsellor leaves our practice.

Changes to this Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy forms part of the agreement between you and us (either in your capacity as a client or a third-party service provider). We may, from time to time, amend this Privacy Policy, in whole or part, at our sole discretion. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be effective immediately upon the posting of the revised Privacy Policy on https://liveyourstory.com.au Depending on the nature of the change, we may announce the change on the https://liveyourstory.com.au home page or by email (if we have your email address). However, in any event, by continuing to use the Website and/or our service following any changes, you will be deemed to have agreed to such changes. If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, as amended from time to time, in whole or part, you must terminate your use of the Website and inform us immediately prior to any further receipt of our counselling services.

Contact us:
If you have any questions about our Policies, or if you wish to request access to your personal information, correct or update your details, or raise any privacy concerns you may have, please contact us at admin@liveyourstory.com.au

For further information on your privacy rights go to: www.privacy.gov.au. For further information on the Health Records Act, go to: https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/about/legislation/health-records-act; http://www.health.vic.gov.au/hsc/downloads/hppextract.pdf

Effective Date
We review our policy every 6 months. The effective date of this latest policy was on the 27th of January 2022 until further notice.