Your privacy

1. Who this is about

Natural Zen Counselling is a sole practice. That means me, Jennifer Rodriguez Ruiz, working under ABN 23 736 392 728 from rooms in Newstead, Brisbane and online. There is no practice manager, no admin assistant, no shared inbox. When you send something through this website it lands with one person.

This page covers the website and the enquiries that come through it. If you become a client, we go through a separate consent and confidentiality agreement together in the first session, in more detail than a web page can sensibly hold.

2. The law that applies

Counselling is a health service, and that matters here. Most Australian businesses turning over less than three million dollars a year are exempt from the Privacy Act 1988. Health service providers are not, no matter how small they are. A one-person counselling practice is bound by the Act and by the thirteen Australian Privacy Principles in exactly the same way a hospital is.

So this is not a courtesy document. It is a description of obligations I already have.

Counselling notes are health information under the Act, which is a category the law treats more carefully than an email address or a phone number. I cannot collect it without your consent, I cannot use it for anything other than your care, and the rules about holding it and handing it over are stricter.

3. What I collect and when

Only what I need, and only when you hand it over. Nothing on this site collects information about you quietly in the background beyond the anonymous usage statistics described further down.

Two things I deliberately do not do. I do not send quiz answers or form content to Google Analytics, so nothing you type is ever attached to an analytics event. And I do not run advertising trackers on this site, so there is no pixel here telling a social network that you were reading about grief.

4. The starting point quiz

This one deserves its own section, because it is the place where people tend to be most open and least aware of where their words are going.

The quiz is a gentle orientation tool. It is not an assessment, it does not screen you for anything, and it produces no score and no diagnosis. Its only job is to point you at the part of the site most likely to be useful.

You can take all six questions without entering anything. Your answers stay in your browser and go nowhere. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent.

I delete those emails once I have replied, and in any case within three months. If you would rather the whole thing stayed on your screen, read the result there and close the tab. That is a perfectly good way to use it.

5. The mailing list

Asking me something is not the same as asking to hear from me, and I keep those two things apart on purpose.

The contact form and the workplace enquiry form do not feed a list at all. Your address is used to answer you and then it is finished. There is no box to tick because there is nothing to tick it for.

The quiz and the free guide each have a separate tick box, sitting apart from the thing you actually came for and never ticked for you. You get the result, or the guide, either way.

Wherever you do opt in, I record the date and the exact wording you agreed to, so that if you ever ask why you are hearing from me I can show you. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and leaving takes one click and no explanation. This is how the Spam Act 2003 expects consent to work, and it is also just decent manners.

6. Who else can see it

Running a small practice means using other people's software. Here is the honest list, including the parts that sit overseas.

Because several of these sit outside Australia, sending information through this website involves an overseas disclosure, and the Privacy Act asks me to say so plainly rather than bury it. I have picked services that publish their security and privacy commitments, but once information is held overseas it is subject to that country's laws as well as ours.

Nobody on that list is a person. They are pieces of software doing a mechanical job. No human being other than me reads your enquiry, and I do not use any client information to train or improve anyone's product.

Counselling notes are treated differently again. They are never put through any of these services.

7. How long I keep things

Some of this I get to choose and some of it is set by the professional standards I work to.

Those last two client figures are not mine to shorten. They come from the professional good practice guidelines I work to as a PACFA Member, and they exist so that a record is still there if you need it years later, which people sometimes do.

8. When I would break confidence

Almost never. But I would rather be exact about the exceptions than reassuring and vague, because vague is how people get caught out.

• Serious and imminent risk. If I believed you or someone else was in real danger of being seriously harmed, I would act on it, and wherever there was any room to do so I would tell you first.
• A court order or subpoena. If a court requires records, I have to produce them. I would let you know unless I were legally barred from doing so.
• Child sexual abuse. Since July 2021, Queensland law has required every adult in the state, not only health workers, to report a reasonable belief that a child is being sexually abused. That duty applies to me like it applies to everyone.
• You ask me to. A letter to your GP, a report for somebody else. Written consent from you, and it goes nowhere else.

That is the whole list. Everything outside it stays between us.

9. Seeing what I hold

You have a right to see the information I hold about you and to have it corrected if it is wrong. This is not a favour I am offering, it is the eleventh and twelfth Australian Privacy Principles.

Email me and I will confirm within seven days and answer properly within thirty. For counselling notes I will usually suggest we sit down and read them together rather than posting a file out, because notes written quickly in the middle of a session can read strangely out of context and I would rather be there to explain a shorthand phrase than leave you puzzling over it.

There are narrow situations where access can be refused, mostly where releasing something would put someone at serious risk or would expose another person's private information. If that ever came up I would tell you why in writing, and I would look for a way to give you as much as I properly could.

You can also ask me to delete what I hold. For enquiries and mailing list details that is immediate. For clinical records I am bound by the retention periods above, and I will say so honestly rather than pretend otherwise.

10. Keeping it safe

• The website runs over an encrypted connection, which is the padlock in your address bar.
• Accounts holding any client information use two-factor authentication.
• Paper notes live in a locked cabinet. Digital notes sit in encrypted storage that is not the email inbox.
• Online sessions run on an encrypted video platform, and I take them from a private room with the door shut.
• Nothing is stored on a phone.

If a breach ever happened that was likely to cause you serious harm, I would tell you and notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which is what the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires. I would tell you what happened, what it means for you, and what I was doing about it.

11. If you are unhappy

Tell me first if you can bear to. Most of what goes wrong is fixable and I would rather hear it directly. Email me and I will respond within thirty days.

If that does not resolve it, or you would rather not come to me, you have two independent routes and you do not need my permission to use either.

• PACFA handles complaints about the conduct of its members, including me. Their process is published on their website.
• The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner handles privacy complaints, on 1300 363 992 or through oaic.gov.au. They will usually want you to have raised it with me first.

12. Changes to this page

If I add a service or change how something is handled, I will update this page and change the date below. If a change affects information I already hold about you in a way that matters, I will tell you directly rather than leaving you to notice.

Questions about any of this are welcome, and asking does not commit you to anything. Send me a message or call 0411 882 063.