Privacy Policy

Purpose

Lavender Counselling is committed to collecting, using and disclosing your personal information responsibly, and only to the extent necessary to offer you counselling services. This policy explains what we collect, why, how it is protected, and the choices you have. It reflects our obligations under British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) and the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), as well as the ethical standards of the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) and the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA).

What is personal information?

Personal information is any information about an identifiable person: for example, your name, age, address, phone number, health history, or any of your activities or views. Business contact information (such as a work address or work phone number) is treated differently under privacy law.

We ask for your express consent whenever we collect your personal information. In some situations, consent is reasonably implied by your own actions: when you fill in our intake form or book an appointment, you are providing that information to us so that we can arrange and provide your counselling, and we use it only for that purpose. You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits; withdrawing consent may affect our ability to continue providing services, and we will explain any consequences before acting on your request.

Confidentiality and its limits

Our counsellors work with Lavender Counselling as independent professionals. Your counsellor is personally and professionally responsible for keeping what you share in counselling confidential and for keeping your clinical record, under the standards of their professional association. Lavender Counselling is responsible for the administrative information described in this policy, such as booking, payment, website and newsletter information.

What you share in counselling is confidential, and your counsellor will review confidentiality with you at the start of services. By law and under our professional standards, a counsellor may disclose confidential information without your consent only in limited circumstances:

There is a substantial risk of serious, imminent harm to you
There is a substantial risk of serious, imminent harm to another person
Disclosure is needed to protect a minor or a vulnerable adult, consistent with the law
Disclosure is required by law, such as by a court order or subpoena

Access to your personal information

You have the right to access the personal information Lavender Counselling holds about you. Before releasing records we are required to make sure the release would not harm you or any third party, so information about third parties may be removed from what we provide. Requests to review, change or correct your personal information can be directed to your counsellor or to carolynn@lavendercounselling.com.

Our support staff may see your name, your appointment times, and whether a session has been paid for. They never have access to your clinical records unless directly specified (for example, when you work with a student intern counsellor, their clinical supervisor has access to the clinical record for supervision). If you prefer to be entirely anonymous in our systems, we are happy to set you up under a number so that only your own counsellor knows your identity; please speak to your counsellor about this.

A small number of people may, through the course of their duties, have limited access to some personal information we hold: for example, our accountant, legal counsel, or a banking official if you have paid by e-transfer. Their access is limited to what their task requires, and they never have access to clinical records.

Our website, cookies and analytics

Like most websites, ours uses a small number of measurement tools that help us understand how visitors use our pages, so we can make the site clearer and more helpful. These tools may set cookies (small text files) in your browser:

Google Analytics helps us see which pages are visited and how people find us (for example, through a search engine).
Google Ads measurement tells us when an advertisement we have placed leads someone to our site, so we can spend our small advertising budget responsibly.

When you first visit our site, a banner asks whether you accept these cookies. Analytics and advertising cookies are set only if you say yes, and you can change your mind at any time using the banner’s preference options or your browser settings. The website works fully either way.

These tools measure website visits only. They have no connection to counselling records, session content, or your relationship with your counsellor, and we never use website data to identify or profile individual visitors.

Online booking

Appointments are booked through Acuity Scheduling, our scheduling provider. When you book, the details you enter (such as your name, contact information, appointment time, and your answers to our intake questions) are stored securely by Acuity and used only to manage your appointments with us. Acuity is a US-based company, and this information may be stored on servers in the United States.

Our newsletter is optional. We send it only to people who have chosen to sign up, either on our intake form or through our website, and no more than monthly. If you do not sign up, your information is never added to our mailing list and is never shared with Mailchimp, the service we use to send the newsletter. If you do sign up, Mailchimp holds the details you gave us for the newsletter, such as your email address, and this information is likely stored on servers in the United States. We do not share or sell the mailing list to anyone. In line with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, every newsletter identifies us, includes our mailing address, and includes a one-click unsubscribe link; unsubscribing is immediate and permanent.

AI-assisted administration

We use privacy-conscious AI tools, under our direction, to help us administer our website and newsletter and to understand overall patterns, such as how many people read a page or open an email. These tools work with aggregate information wherever possible. Your information is never sold, and it is not used to train AI models. These tools never have access to clinical records or to anything discussed in counselling sessions.

Where your information is stored

Some of the service providers named above (Google, Acuity, and, for newsletter subscribers only, Mailchimp) may store information on servers outside Canada, most commonly in the United States. We also rely on a small number of other service providers to run the practice, such as for payment processing, accounting and email. Each receives only the information needed for its task, and some may store information outside Canada. Wherever your information is processed, our responsibilities to you under Canadian privacy law do not change, and clinical records are never stored with these providers.

Safeguards

We limit what we collect to what the service requires, and we protect what we hold with safeguards appropriate to its sensitivity.

Paper information

We significantly limit the amount of paper information we collect
Paper information is kept in a locked filing cabinet in a locked room, and keys are kept secure, with access limited to authorized people
Policies are in place restricting who may access this room
Paper information is very rarely transported. When it is, it must remain in the personal custody of a person representing Lavender Counselling and be securely locked away whenever unattended

Digital information

Devices must be password protected
Each user has their own account and password
Policies are in place restricting who may access digital information
Lavender Counselling’s own cloud-based systems hold only information such as phone numbers, addresses, appointment times and payment information, never clinical records. If you prefer, you can be set up in these systems under a client number instead of your name, as described under Access to your personal information
Some information is sent by email, but only with your consent

Clinical records

Your clinical record is kept and maintained by your counsellor, in line with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors’ standards for documentation and record keeping
Counsellors who choose to keep records at our office can store them in a locked filing cabinet in a locked room that we provide
Policies are in place restricting who may access this room
If your counsellor stops working with Lavender Counselling, we keep their contact information so that requests for your records can still be handled

General safeguards

Everyone who works with us, including staff, contractors and students, is required to follow our written privacy practices, which include:

Accessing personal information only on a need-to-know basis
Stopping right away if someone begins to share personal information that should not be shared
Using discretion when collecting or discussing personal information where others could hear
Removing information a recipient does not need before sharing any document
Recognizing and declining attempts to obtain personal information without authorization
Disposing of personal information securely

Breaching our policies on the use and disclosure of personal information is taken seriously and may lead to the end of a person’s employment or contract with Lavender Counselling.

Retention and disposal

Administrative information held by Lavender Counselling, such as booking and payment records, is destroyed seven years after your services with us end, in a manner designed to protect your privacy. Your counsellor keeps your clinical record for the period their professional standards require: at least seven years after your services end, or, if you were under 19 when you received services, at least seven years after your 19th birthday.

If a privacy breach occurs

If personal information in our care is lost, stolen or accessed without authorization, we will contain the breach, assess the risk to those affected, notify you where the breach could cause you harm, and report it to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia in line with our professional standards and privacy law.

Questions, concerns and complaints

Questions or concerns about this policy or about how your personal information is handled can be directed to carolynn@lavendercounselling.com. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia. Concerns about a counsellor’s professional conduct may also be raised with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors.

Transparency

This policy is available to the public on our website and can be provided by any of our staff or contractors on request. It was last updated in October 2026, when it was rewritten in plain language and the sections describing our website tools, online booking, newsletter, AI-assisted administration, breach response, and confidentiality limits were added, and the description of how clinical records are kept was updated.