Client privacy notice

About this notice

The Abingdon Bridge (TAB) provides mental health, counselling and wellbeing support to young people.

When you are referred to us or use one of our services, we need to collect and use some information about you.

Some of this information can be sensitive, particularly information about your health, wellbeing and personal circumstances.

This notice explains what information we collect, why we need it, how we keep it safe and what rights you have.

It also explains how we use information about people who make referrals to us and emergency contacts.

If you only use our website, make a donation, sign up for updates or contact us about something unrelated to receiving support, please see our Website & Supporter Privacy Notice instead.

Who is responsible for your information?

The Abingdon Bridge is responsible for deciding how your personal information is used. In data protection law, this means we are the data controller.

You can contact us at:

The Abingdon Bridge
3 Market Place
Abingdon
OX14 3HG

Email: info@theabingdonbridge.org.uk
Telephone: 01235 522375

The Abingdon Bridge is a registered charity in England, charity number 1160080.

What information do we collect?

The information we collect will depend on your circumstances and the support you need.

When you are referred to us, we may collect:

your name, home address and date of birth;

your email address and telephone number;

your gender and ethnicity;

information about disabilities, health conditions or learning needs;

the name and telephone number of an emergency contact;

your GP surgery and its address;

information about other organisations supporting you;

whether you have used our services before;

the type of support you are looking for;

whether you would prefer face-to-face or online sessions;

whether you have asked to work with a particular member of our team;

the reason you or someone else has contacted us;

information about risks to you or other people, including relevant risk assessments; and

where it is necessary to provide support safely, relevant information about criminal convictions or offences.

As you use our services, we may also keep information about the support we provide, appointments, communications, assessments, safeguarding concerns and notes made by the people supporting you.

Some of this information is considered particularly sensitive under data protection law. This includes information about your health, disabilities and ethnicity. We take extra care when using this type of information.

Information about criminal convictions and offences also receives additional protection under data protection law.

Where does the information come from?

Often, you will give information to us yourself.

Sometimes somebody else may refer you to us or provide information on your behalf. This could include:

a parent, carer or family member;

a GP or other healthcare professional;

a mental health worker;

a school, college or other education provider;

a social worker or other support professional; or

another organisation already supporting you.

When somebody else makes a referral, we may also collect their name, email address and telephone number so that we know who made the referral and can contact them where appropriate.

We may also receive information from other organisations involved in supporting you where it is appropriate and lawful for them to share it with us.

Why do we need your information?

We use your information so that we can:

understand why you have been referred to us;

decide what support may be appropriate for you;

contact you and arrange appointments;

provide counselling, mental health and wellbeing support;

make reasonable adjustments for disabilities or learning needs;

understand and manage any risks to you, our staff or other people;

keep an appropriate record of the support we provide;

work safely with other organisations involved in your care or support where appropriate;

respond to safeguarding concerns;

contact somebody in an emergency where appropriate;

deal with complaints, concerns or legal claims;

meet our legal, regulatory and safeguarding responsibilities; and

monitor and improve our services.

We will only use information that is relevant to what we need to do.

If information is optional, we will make this clear where we collect it. If you do not provide information that we genuinely need to assess your referral or provide support safely, it may affect the support we are able to offer.

What allows us to use your information?

Data protection law requires us to have a lawful reason for using personal information.

For most of the information needed to assess referrals and provide our services, we rely on our legitimate interests. This means it is necessary for us to use the information so that we can provide safe and effective mental health and wellbeing services. When we rely on legitimate interests, we consider your privacy and your rights, particularly because many of the people we support are under 18.

Where the law requires us to collect, keep or share information, we may use it because we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Sensitive information

Information about your health, disability, ethnicity and some other personal characteristics receives extra protection under data protection law.

Where this information is necessary to provide mental health, counselling, wellbeing or similar care and support, we rely on the legal condition that allows sensitive information to be used for the provision of health or social care, where it is handled by people who have a duty to keep it confidential.

Where necessary to protect a child or an adult at risk from physical, mental or emotional harm, we may also use sensitive information for safeguarding purposes.

If we ask you for information purely for optional equality monitoring, such as ethnicity, we will make this clear and will use it only where we have an appropriate legal basis to do so.

Criminal conviction information

We will only collect or use information about criminal convictions or offences where it is relevant and necessary to provide our services safely or manage risks.

Data protection law places extra restrictions on this information. We will only use it where the law specifically allows us to do so, for example where it is necessary for the provision of health or social care or for safeguarding.

Confidentiality and sharing your information

We treat information about our clients as confidential.

Your information will normally only be available to members of TAB's team who need it to provide, manage or supervise your support. This may include qualified counsellors, therapists, wellbeing or support workers, managers and people providing appropriate professional or clinical supervision.

We may sometimes need to share relevant information with another organisation or professional involved in supporting you, such as your GP, another health or support service or the person or organisation that referred you.

Where appropriate, we will discuss this with you first.

There are situations where we may need to share information without your permission. For example, this may happen if:

we believe sharing information is necessary to protect you or somebody else from harm;

there is a safeguarding concern;

there is a serious or immediate risk to someone's safety;

we are required to do so by law; or

information is required by the police, a court or another organisation with appropriate legal authority.

We will only share information that is relevant and necessary for the situation.

Systems we use to keep your information

Information submitted through our online referral form is initially stored securely using our website provider, Wix.

Information needed to manage your referral and support is also entered into VIEWS, our client-management system.

We may use other trusted technology providers to help us store, secure or manage information. These organisations may only use information on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions and data protection law.

Some technology providers may process information outside the UK. Where this happens, we take steps to make sure that appropriate legal safeguards are in place to protect your information.

Keeping your information safe

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access or disclosure.

Access to client information is restricted to people who need it for their work. Staff, counsellors, support workers and other people authorised to access client information are expected to keep it confidential.

How long do we keep your information?

We do not keep personal information for longer than we need it.

When deciding how long information should be kept, we consider:

the type and sensitivity of the information;

the age of the client;

safeguarding requirements;

professional, insurance or regulatory requirements;

whether the information may be needed to deal with a complaint or legal claim; and

whether there is any continuing reason for the information to be kept.

When information no longer needs to be retained, we securely delete or anonymise it.

Your rights

Data protection law gives you rights over your personal information. These rights apply to young people as well as adults, although exactly which rights apply can depend on why we are using the information.

You can ask us:

for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;

to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;

to delete information in certain circumstances;

to limit how we use information in certain circumstances; or

to provide or transfer certain information where the right to data portability applies.

If we are relying on your consent for a particular use of your information, you can withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing consent will not affect anything we lawfully did before you withdrew it.

Your right to object

Where we use your personal information because of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to that use.

If you object, we will consider your circumstances and whether there is an overriding reason why we need to continue using the information.

Some rights do not apply in every situation. For example, we may sometimes need to keep information because of safeguarding, legal or other important responsibilities.

If you would like to exercise any of your rights, contact us at info@theabingdonbridge.org.uk.

We may need to ask for information to make sure that we are giving personal information to the correct person.

We will normally respond to requests within one month.

If you have concerns about your information

If you are worried about how we have collected, used, stored or shared your personal information, please contact us:

Email: info@theabingdonbridge.org.uk
Telephone: 01235 522375

Please tell us that you are making a data protection complaint so that we can make sure it is handled appropriately.

We will acknowledge a data protection complaint within 30 days. We will investigate the issue, keep you informed where appropriate and tell you the outcome without unnecessary delay.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which is the UK's independent data protection regulator.

You can find information about making a complaint on the ICO website.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time, for example if our services, systems or legal responsibilities change.

The latest version will always be available on our website.

Last update: 13 October 2026