Your therapy website is one of the most important tools for attracting clients to your private practice. In this episode, website specialist Daragh MacLoughlin from WebHealer explains why GDPR, privacy policies and cookie notices aren't just about legal compliance. They can also help build trust with potential clients and, in Daragh's view, may even play a part in how search engines assess your website.

Many therapists put GDPR to the bottom of the to do list because it feels complicated, technical and overwhelming. Daragh explains the recent changes in plain English, shares the most common mistakes therapists make, and introduces a simple way to keep your website policies up to date without becoming an expert yourself.

Takeaways

• Why every therapist in private practice needs up to date website privacy policies.
• The recent changes to UK GDPR that affect therapy websites.
• What cookie policies are and why they matter.
• Why handling client data well is about more than legal compliance.
• How good website policies can help build trust with potential clients.
• Why Daragh believes having the right website foundations may also help your visibility in Google search.
• Simple ways to make sure your therapy website stays up to date as regulations change.

Daragh MacLoughlin is Managing Director of WebHealer, one of the UK's best-known website providers for counsellors and psychotherapists. WebHealer has been helping therapists create professional websites that attract clients for more than twenty years.

He is also the creator of Policy Diary, a service designed specifically for therapists to help them generate and maintain GDPR-compliant privacy policies, cookie policies and complaints procedures as regulations change.

Special offer

If you'd like to use Policy Diary or build your website with WebHealer, Daragh has kindly arranged an exclusive discount code for people in my community.

Use GEC999 to receive:

• Free installation of Policy Diary (worth £9.99).
• £50 off a new WebHealer website.

We are an affiliate of WebHealer and Policy Diary and may be paid commission if you buy through our link. As we are an affiliate and WebHealer and Policy Diary were created by a third party, we shall have no liability whatsoever in any circumstances to you in relation to the WebHealer and Policy Diary (including in relation to any consequential loss of any type whatsoever) other than in relation to matters for which we are not lawfully able to limit or exclude our liability

Coming next week:

Daragh returns to the podcast to talk about one of the biggest questions therapists are asking right now: Is AI changing the way clients find us online? We explore what's happening with Google search, what makes a therapy website useful, and why helping the right people is still the best long-term strategy for attracting clients.

Setting up in private practice? Download my free checklist HERE

Need ideas for how to get clients? Download my free handout 21 Ways for Counsellors to Attract New Clients HERE

You can also find me here:

The Good Enough Counsellors Facebook Group

Josephine Hughes on Facebook

Josephine Hughes on YouTube

My website: josephinehughes.com

Keywords: therapy website, GDPR for therapists, therapy website GDPR, privacy policies for therapists, cookie policies, therapy website SEO, Google search for therapists, attracting therapy clients, therapy website design, counsellor website, private practice website, data protection for therapists, therapist marketing, getting therapy clients, therapist online presence, private practice growth, WebHealer, Policy Diary

The information contained in Good Enough Counsellors is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this podcast are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this podcast.

Josephine Hughes disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this podcast.

Google's job is bringing people to useful websites which satisfy the needs of the searcher.

Google wants to connect people with useful websites, trustworthy websites, especially when the stakes are high, as they are when it goes to a therapist website. If you have a leak in your kitchen, you're going to ask a friend for a plumber because your friend shares probably the same values of you.

And also they wouldn't go ahead and recommend someone who is rubbish. Kuba is no different. And so you need to give Google every reason to recommend you and no reason not to.

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect. I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want and create the practice of your dreams.

So today we're talking about one of those jobs that many therapists know they ought to do, but somehow it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the list. GDPR privacy policies and cookie policies.

If I'm honest, it's one of those topics that can make my eyes glaze over and I suspect that I'm not the only one. So. So today I've got someone with me who's just made the whole process a whole lot easier for us. My guest today is Darren McLachlan from Webhealer.

Many therapists will already know Webhealer as one of the UK's best known website providers for counsellors and psychotherapists. They help therapists build professional websites without needing lots of technical knowledge.

And I've invited Dara onto the podcast today because they've recently developed something called Policy Diary, which is a tool that helps therapists keep their website policies up to date as the regulations change. So, Dara, welcome to Good Enough Counsellors.

Hello, Josephine, and thank you for having me on. Delighted to be here.

Yes, brilliant. Now, I've just, in our test recording, embarrassed you slightly because I was saying to you, I discovered that you rode solo across the Atlantic.

Yes, as if I didn't have enough to be doing in between websites and data protection. Yeah, last year I. I rode solo 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on my own.

It took me 39 days, 20 hours and 16 minutes and it was an amazing experience. We raised a load of money for charity and, you know, there's not many times we get to be on our own in our lives and being in.

The foot of that ocean.

Yeah, yeah, it was. Was truly that's alone as you're going to get, you know, so it was amazing experience yeah.

Was it very scary?

Yeah, it was times, definitely. I mean, no matter how much training you do, Mother Nature wins every time.

And so I was there as a guest of Mother Nature and there was times where she made it easy on me and there was times where it was quite difficult, I will say that. And I was questioning my choices. Yeah, but look at, I got through it. It was great. I had an amazing experience.

The ocean, as I say, open many doors I think it would open for me. And it also get me a lot.

I mean, on the toughest days it sent me amazing vistas of sunrises, sunsets, moon rises, moon sets, and even sent me pods of hundreds of dolphins on the toughest of days to swim alongside the boat and check in with me and make sure I was good. So it was a life changing experience, one I'm happy to have behind me, if I'm being honest. And back to the keyboard again once more, you know, so.

So did it sort of change your, your outlook, do you think? I mean, you know, said it's a life changing experience. I mean, did you sort of come back and find that everyday life just.

I don't know, how did it impact you?

Yeah, I mean, I think in the first couple of weeks after I returned it was very different because I suppose life on land seemed to have just stayed still and my life had seemed to have changed quite substantially.

But I think probably my biggest takeaway is I'm a lot more patient about certain things because when you're on the ocean and you're rowing, wind obviously pays a massive factor in it. So if it's going with you, fantastic. If it's going against you, not so fantastic.

You don't get very dead.

No, you don't. In fact, you start to kind of go back to where you, you started from.

So you must learn to really, I suppose accept what's right in front of you and deal with what's in the moment and also live in the now and not, I suppose, live in the future too much, be more present because you can't change things, you can't control. Wind was one of them, obviously. So I think patience was a big thing.

Somebody actually, and I have, funny enough, they, somebody who came to meet me as I was on my final approach to the island in the Caribbean. They, they came out in a boat, it was like a media boat to take photos of me arriving. And she had a cup of tea, Yogi, tea.

And on each tea bag there's a little saying or a little phrase, you know, and she so I did my interview with the, the people who organized. It was a, it was a race afterwards and I talked about the challenges that I encountered.

But she gave me this, this, this yogi tea bag thing that I have in my hand here and it said, accept the challenge you are facing. It may become your greatest gift.

And it really resonated with me because there was times when I was on the ocean when I expected the wind to change and weather to improve and it didn't. But in reality, these were the lessons that I was being taught when, which were going to serve me once I got back to dry land.

So really amazing, really amazing stuff.

What an amazing story. Yeah. Oh, just incredible. So do you think that's sort of like changed your attitude towards business at all? You know, you're running a business or.

Well, I suppose when it comes to the business of Webhealer, which, you know, I've been involved in quite some time and Webhealer has been around for over 20 years now, we're in a really privileged place where we get to help others. Help, help others.

Yeah.

And there's not many times you can say that in business because business can be a little bit corporate, a little bit capitalistic, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you know, at the same time to be able to say that we're actually helping people make a difference I think is fantastic.

We have some broad, anonymized, naturally, stats on the volume of email that goes from our client websites to our client, our own therapist customers. So new inquiries that are coming through your websites, we can see the volume of those.

And honestly, it's overwhelming when I see how many people are contacting our customers looking for assistance and knowing that we're playing a part in that, I think it's fantastic. So, you know, business doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Everybody can win.

In the same way that when I was taking part in the Atlantic Row, I was racing against other people and I had a very close competitor in the solo class with me. And yes, I, I won and I, I came first ahead of him, but I don't think he lost and I didn't lose anything by it.

I think we were both absolutely enriched by the experience. And so, yeah, I think business doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Everybody can win.

And I think if you hold that close to what you do and how you do it, I think you'll always be successful.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. And I think because it's sort of like you're on your own journeys, aren't you?

The, the two rowers were on their own separate journeys experiencing what they were experiencing. And there's as much to gain from that as there is from winning or losing, I think.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it, it goes for the same for even, you know, your, your, your Facebook groups.

You've got a lot of people who are on, you know, their own journeys, but they're in the same boat, so to speak.

Yeah.

And they can exchange their life experiences with each other and enrich each other. They don't have to kind of hold it all.

That's why communities like yours are really important, because it really provides that kind of fertile ground of learning, knowledge and growth. And I think if everybody did something like that, wouldn't the world be just a better place?

Yeah. And I sort of really resonate with what you're saying about how your business is about helping people get the help.

Because that, I just think that's so important and it's so brilliant to have people like yourself involved to be able to help us do the things that we're good at and leave the sort of techie stuff that we're not so good at to the people who bring those skills, which is fantastic. So, yeah, so I'd love to talk more about this because it's far more interesting actually. Gdpr.

Yes.

But I mean, part of the reason why I got in touch was because there's, you know, there's been changes with, with gdpr. What do you think most therapist attitudes are to. To that sort of thing?

Hide under the duvet? I think if I had to pick a three word answer to that. Yeah, Yeah.

I mean, look at, we say it all along and it applies to the web healer business of building websites and helping people be found online as much as it does to the data protection side of things. Your audience counselors, psychotherapists in the UK are in the business of helping people.

They're not in the business of building websites and fighting it out with the minutiae of the data protection acts in the same way. You know, so we have a phrase in Ireland which is, you know, stick to your knitting. And I'm very much sticking to my knitting.

And I would never dream of dipping my toe in the world of counseling and psychotherapy because it's not my thing.

Yeah.

And, and a lot of the time people I suppose, try and look under the covers of what's the, you know, what's required when it comes to building a website or, or being compliant and it becomes a real area of friction and frustration for them. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's unfortunate.

So you're in the business of helping people, you're not in the business of wading through data protection laws.

And I think it's really important to be able to plug in with a third party like ourselves and others should they exist to really kind of help you square that circle, tick that box whatever way you want to put it, or just tick the box because, you know, there's a lot of confidence when you renew your Ethical Body membership every year you say, okay, job done great. Or if you pay for your professional indemnity insurance, you say done great, taken care of.

And you want to, when it comes to things like the new data protection, be able to say, I have that done, I've sorted that and have confidence in it so that you can truly stick to running your own practice. Yeah, because all of these other things are distractions.

And since the, the new laws came into effect, we've seen a lot of people come in and being very honest with us, have said that they've been tussling with this for weeks on end. They're not really sure where to start.

It just seems like such a unnecessary use of their time which honestly is best served seeing clients, supervision, cbd, etc, you know.

So, yeah, so that's why we came up with, with, with Policy Diary and I suppose you've introduced me as Web Healer, which is very much our day to day, but we wanted to maybe segue a little bit off the WebHeeder brand simply because we wanted to let all of the therapists around the UK because although we're very fortunate to have thousands of therapists as clients, we don't have them all.

And so much as we'd like to, but, but so we wanted to really just kind of let people know, hey, listen, we have a solution here and it doesn't matter who your service provider is, you can come to us and we can help you out. And that's kind of where we were.

So let's just have just a little description. So people need to have on their website, they need to have their GDPR data protection sort of policy or notice, don't they?

They need a notice on the website, but what do they need to have? This is. Let's just quickly run through it. Yeah.

And there was parts of that that came into effect, and the most recent piece of it came into effect at the end of June of this year. And basically all these laws are in place to, I suppose, protect people and their personal information. And as a ICO registered data controller.

Now, can I just start and say that if you are in the business of providing therapy and you're handling records of your clients, one of the most frequent questions we get asked is, do I need to register with the ico? So this all starts from that.

Because if you are swelling, if you are selling chocolate bars on the side of the road, you don't need to register with the ico, but if you're in the business of counseling, psychotherapy, you must be registered with the ico. And then all of these laws start to apply to you because you're what's known as a data controller. You control other people's data.

So definitely the most frequently asked question that we get is, do I need to be ICO registered? The answer is yes, absolutely, 100%, yeah. Okay.

So from there, you need to outline to people how you collect, store and process their personal information and why you collect it. So obviously, you collect their name so that you can, you know, speak to them and call up their notes. You collect their.

Their medical history, if it's relevant. You collect their date of birth, if it's relevant, any medication they might be on. Again, if it's relevant to their therapeutic journey and whatnot.

And you must overtly state that and say, this is why we're collecting it. Now, when it comes to a website, you have cookies on a website.

And with website cookies, there has been some laws recently that have been changed as part of this duaa. And you must state to people that you collect cookies and what cookies they are and for what purpose.

But most importantly, you must give them the option to opt out or to refuse them.

Yeah.

So what does that look like? Well, for example, if you go onto any website, let's just say you're on Amazon, you're doing a bit of shopping.

Amazon places a cookie on your computer that allows you to save things into your basket. Now, without that cookie, Amazon doesn't work, I think that's fair to say. So that's what's known as an essential cookie.

It's needed for the function of the website.

Non essential cookies might be something like some tracking code from Facebook or some Google Analytics code which you then use to make marketing decisions and so forth. So that's non essential. So you must state in your cookie policy which are essential, not essential, and you must give them an opt out.

And so even something as simple as embedding a YouTube video on your website that connects to Google and Google gets your information because YouTube is owned by Google, you must actually block that YouTube video before showing it so that somebody has the opportunity to consent to that. So it's all about consent, opting in, opting out. So you must have that on your website.

If you know if you have a website, most therapists do and if you don't, you should, but you must then speak to web here.

But you need to have a cookie banner on your website that indicates that you do use cookies and for what purposes give more information as well as the opt out. And you know, there's two sides to this.

There's the regulatory side where you're, you're adhering to the laws, but there's also the softer side of it which is if I'm somebody who's looking to work with a therapist and obviously I'm going to be sharing a lot of personal information with you, I also want to have confidence that you're going to treat my personal data with respect and that you're going to, in the same way that you would with, you know, other rights that I have as a human, you're going to allow me to exercise those rights when it comes to my data so that, you know, after a period of time, if I've moved on and we've ended our work together, that I have the facility to ask you to remove our information or if I feel that there's perhaps an inaccuracy in the information, that I have the right to ask you to update that information and correct it.

And what we do in Policy Diary is we obviously take care of the cookie side of things by scanning your website and listing out what they are as well as the cookie banner.

But when it comes to gdpr, we talk about how to exercise your rights and the rights that somebody has when dealing with a data controller and how to exercise those rights. That's really important.

Yeah.

And if I may, I know I'm going on here a bit, but the last and probably one of the other things in the DUAA that came into effect. Effect is that you must give people the ability to complain about how their data is handled.

Yeah, the big one. Yeah, that's the big one. Yeah.

So there's two ways you can't just say, well, you got to go to the ICO and best wishes to you. You know, that's. That doesn't cut the mustard anymore. You must actually provide people with the means to do it.

Now, it can be just a specific email address, but again, you must be overt in saying, hey, this is the email for complaints. You must email here. And if you're not happy with this, you then have the right to go to the ico.

So Policy Diary does that by basically giving people a complaints form, they can. It's woven into their. Their policies. And then what happens is if somebody makes a complaint, you must respond to that person within 30 days.

And how we do it with Policy Diary is we take in the complaint, we store it securely encrypted, but then we also tell the therapist, you've got 30 days. And if you don't reply to it after 30 days, we remind you, well, we remind you once 15 days have passed and that we keep an audit log.

So if it ever went further and it went to the ICO with a formal complaint, you at least have a very printable and useful audit log you can use to defend your position. Now, hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but we're all about providing you with the rails to do it so that you don't have to worry about that.

That's another really sort of useful aspect of it, is to have that a.

The reminder, because it's easy, like you said, that the hiding under the duvet, you know, you don't get this complaint thing, oh, God, what am I going to do about this?

Yeah, of course.

And it's easy to put it to one side and not do anything about it. So to have that. Exactly, yeah.

So I think when we all have the tools to deal with things, then it's a lot easier to deal with them head on.

But if you're not confident in the tools or you don't know if you're doing something right, then it's totally understandable that you'll put things on the long finger. And that's kind of why we built this framework. I mean, the complaints form in itself is very straightforward and very simple.

The documents themselves are very straightforward and very simple. The cookie policy, the same, or the cookie banner.

But collectively, there are a set of tools that you need in your business that you put them on the virtual shelf and should you ever need to call upon them, you know that they're there, they're up to date.

It's like your Insurance policy in the same way that if you have an issue, you call your insurer and you assume and you hope that they're going to sort you out and they will of course be paying.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's really important because like you say, it's. I think a lot of people get really stuck at the beginning with how do I write my gdpr, what do I need to have in.

Just feels like there's so much gump to work through. But in actual fact, that's part of the service that you provide, isn't it? Is that it sort of helps you to write it.

So it makes it a lot easier for people.

So what we do is when we, when somebody comes to our website, we ask them for some very basic information. Because, you know, one other part of GDPR is this thing called data minimization. You don't collect things you don't need.

So, for example, we're not asking people who sign up to policy what their date of birth is because we don't need it, you know, so we ask the bare minimum. So we ask them for their web address, their name, obviously.

So we communicate and then we collect other information, such as maybe the ethical body, are they NCPs, are they BACP, etc. And we ask them about who has access to, to their data. So does a bookkeeper see initials?

Does you know an IT person have access to your computer where they might see your emails? And we try and cover as many bases as possible based on our understanding and experience of how therapists work.

We also ask about the tools that they use offline online, if they work with minors, data retention periods. And then we use all of that information in the background to build the policies.

Now the problem, if you're doing it yourself, as you've said, if you sit down, you've got a blank piece of paper. It's a little bit of a cliff face in that you're looking at saying, where do I start?

But actually if you segment everything and you break it down, there's a nice kind of path through the jungle here. And that's what we're trying to do with Policy Diary.

And you know, I would caution people, obviously, you know, do what feels, do what you feel comfortable with, but I would caution people using, you know, AI tools without a really good understanding of what they need. Because look at, if you look at any AI tool these days, it will always say to you, AI is experimental and may produce mistakes.

I'm not really sure this is an area you want to be making Mistakes?

Yeah, you know, absolutely.

You know, there are fines here.

And if you're not addressing this, and this is my experience in ICO cases, if there is a complaint and it's found against you, there are mitigating factors. And the mitigating factor is that you have made an effort to adhere to the laws that are in place.

Yeah, it's not a get out of jail, but it is something that can be seen as a positive thing.

But if you've done nothing or you've, you know, blatantly left out important sections of your policies, including your cookie policy, then, you know, don't expect that mitigation to work in your favor. So, so I'm just cautioned, by all means, experiment, see what these things can produce.

But just be careful is, is my only kind of a piece of advice there. You don't want to have a false sense of security, so to speak, as a result of that.

I mean, I think that sort of, you know, really, for me, it's a pain. It's really a pain having to do it.

Josephine, I was going to say something stronger than that, but I think it, that the second point that you made, that actually it's about, it builds trust up because people do know about things like cookie policies. You know, it's on all the websites, isn't it? Do you accept or decline the cookie policies?

And so there's that sort of trust factor, I think, for people when they are working with a therapist. Have they got a GDPR policy? And if it's all there and it's, it's.

You might not read it, but you think, well, it's all there and it means that they know what they're doing. I mean, yes, perhaps we don't know what we're doing, but at least it looks like we are.

Well, I'll be pretty confident that you do. But, you know, you're right.

These days people are familiar with this also, and this is anecdotal and it's my opinion, but I think there is some value in it, given our experience in the frontline with websites and whatnot.

When it comes to therapy therapist websites, your website is classed as, in the eyes of Google, as something called your money or your life, which effectively means its stakes are high here. Yeah, you can't send somebody to a charlatan.

You know, you want somebody who's qualified, who has an ethical framework or a code of ethics and is, I suppose, a reliable partner in your well being.

And when Google reads websites, it looks for things like your qualifications because Remember, Google's job is bringing people to useful websites which satisfy the needs of the searcher. Google doesn't want to bring searchers to rubbish websites.

If you're searching for a sun holiday in Spain and it lands you on a winter holiday in Turkey, well, you're going to be a bit disappointed about it.

Yeah.

As similarly. Okay, that's an extreme case.

But similarly, if you're looking for a therapist that you know can do couples counseling and you get to a website where someone doesn't offer that, then that search is no good. You're not going to use Google and that's bad for Google.

So Google wants to connect people with useful websites, trustworthy websites, especially when the stakes are high, as they are when it goes to a therapist website.

So as Google reads through your website, the presence of policies indicating how you handle incredibly important information going to be ranked by Google, in my view, in that they're going to take that into account and say, wait a minute, Josephine here on one side has stated all of her policies and she's being very clear about what information she collects and why she collects it and how she uses it and so forth, as well as your rights and your complaints form in line with the law, whereas Dara's website over here has nothing. Now, if you were a third party and you were making a recommendation to somebody, whom would you feel more confident recommending?

The person who has all the boxes ticked or the person who appears not to have let that settle for a minute and think about it and think that. I think I know who I'd be referring to. And so my view is Google won't be that much different.

So not trying to alarm anybody or anything like that, but I think the presence of these policies, I believe, form some element of a ranking factor.

That's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, yeah, it's.

Nobody will ever put their hand up and say, oh yeah, 100%.

But when you consider what search engines look for in a website and what we ourselves look for, because Google and these kind of algorithms are always trying to recommend.

Like for example, if you have a leak in your kitchen, you're going to ask a friend for a plumber because your friend shares probably the same values of you. And then also they wouldn't go ahead and recommend someone who was rubbish.

Yeah.

Google is no different.

Yeah.

And so you need to give Google every reason to recommend you and no reason not to.

Yeah.

And if getting your policies in line is one of those things, then it's really there's very little excuse, just going and doing it. Especially when with services like policy and, sorry, I'm being a little bit, you know, salesy, it makes it incredibly easy.

Or going to another service provider or going to Escobadi and spending an afternoon on it. I don't think you need to spend an afternoon on it, but if that's what you want to do, go for it.

Fact is, you should have them there for many different reasons. And now Google is one of them as well.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So, I mean, there's at least three reasons.

I mean, one, it's the law, two, it helps Google ranking and three, it might help your clients to feel more trustworthy of you. So all sorts of good reasons to actually do it.

And I think when we spoke before the interview as well, you actually think that there's like a really big gap and a lot of people aren't actually including this sort of stuff on their websites, I think. Would that be true?

Yes.

You know, through our research, I mean, we thought about Policy Diary, I suppose, in the last quarter of last year, so it was around autumn last year, we decided that this was definitely a gap. And we're always trying to add value to our own clients and just to the community at large. And we thought, well, this is a question we get regularly.

Why are we referring people over to kind of generic service providers? Because we.

One of the biggest things that we see frustration points is that our clients will come to us after working with somebody who doesn't understand the business of therapy, how our clients think, what they know, what they don't know. And it can be quite a frustration process when you're, when you're not incredibly tech savvy and that's not your forte.

And somebody doesn't understand that we know where our clients sit.

So we did do a lot of market research and we found that a very large percentage of the websites that were out there, and I'm talking less than 10%, overtly stated their data protection safeguards.

Yeah.

Which is crazy in my view.

Yeah. And you know, illegal and yes.

As well. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's it. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the other FAQs we had from people was, well, what happens if I don't do this?

Well, the answer is, technically speaking, you're breaking the law.

Yeah. Yeah.

And how do you feel about hanging it?

Now?

I'm not saying, you know, that you have to publish these things on your website. If you don't have your policies anywhere.

Yeah.

Then Technically, you're breaking the law.

Yeah.

And how do you feel about that name tag? I'm not so sure.

You're probably too comfortable about it, especially when you put so much other effort into your qualifications, into your cpd, your supervision.

Yeah. People really hard to be ethical. So.

Yeah, absolutely. Fundamentally, it's the law and you know, where. Whereas maybe it's low risk, but it's the law and you must adhere to the law.

So.

And especially in such a. An important area of, you know, as we're talking, where you do handle quite a lot of personal data for people, the stakes are high.

Yeah. And it's sensitive personal data as well, you know.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't get any. Any more important than that.

Yeah. I was going to say at this point, anyone who's listening, who's wondering about Policy Diary as well, it's a really. It's not a huge cost.

I just want to say that it's £24, is that right?

Yeah. So, look, we've decided and we've tried to make this as affordable for people because as much as there's a.

An information overload and information and understanding gap with this, that's enough.

We didn't want there to be a financial, I suppose, barrier to people getting compliant because as I said from the outset, we enjoy being in the business of helping our clients help others. And yes, we're a business. Absolutely. But we've tried to make this economic as possible. It's £24 a year and it's an annual fee.

And the simple reason for that is that laws change.

Yeah.

And we keep everything up to date,.

Which is just fantastic because you don't have to think about.

It's the peace of mind.

Yeah, it's the.

It's the peace of mind. So we basically will scan your website every month and if we spot that you've put in a new YouTube video.

Yeah.

We'll update your policies to let you, let your clients know that. Now there's YouTube and, you know, there's cookies as a result of that potentially going their way and here's how to block them and so forth.

So there is the peace of mind point and I think the, the low price point is kind of where we're at there. And I'm sure people have maybe costed this with a solicitor or somebody else, frankly, add a zero there without any bit of bother.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

I mean, because when it sort of came in, I mean, my cookie compliance wasn't up to date and I said to my husband, Oh, I really need to sort my cookies out. I've got no idea how do I find out what, what the cookies are on my website.

And he said, he's a computer programmer, he said there'll be an app for that. And sure enough there was an app for that.

I've got quite a few websites so, you know, we, but we had to pay, I think it was 150 for our, our websites, just five. I think it covered five websites for the annual price. So, you know, £24 is.

There you go. Yeah, I mean that's, that's what our scanner does.

When you put in your website, our scanner will basically connect to your website as if it's a human and it will send, see what cookies programmatically are being set and it'll decipher what they are, it'll understand what they are and then it'll write the relevant clauses for you. So the whole idea then is you don't have this boilerplate policy. It's specific to you and how you work.

And that's where things like ChatGPT and that don't really work too well because they won't always give you an accurate picture of the technologies that you're using on your website. But any of these DIY site builders, a lot of these platforms will set cookies on your website without you knowing it.

And so you actually need to be aware of that.

And how are you going to be aware of it unless you use a tool like you've described or policy diary or you're technical enough to know how cookies are set. And I'm happy to show people how that to do that, but I think it would be a waste of their time, frankly.

What therapists want to do is therapy, you know, that's the most important.

Absolutely.

We don't want to spend our time, you know.

No, no, no, no, no. I mean that's where, that's where your skill set is. So you know, play to your strengths and give somebody else the heavy lifting.

So yeah, the fee is £24 per annum and if you want us to install the piece of code on your website because again, it's, it's not incredibly technical, but it's, it's a technical enough endeavor. We charge a fee, a one time fee of 9.99. And I think you might have maybe something to say about that.

Yeah, sure. Well, great lead in there. You can tell we prepared this in advance, folks. Yeah. So Dara's kindly provided me with a code which is GEC999.

And if you just click on that code, I'm going to put it in the show notes. That will give you the install fee for free. So to take the £9.99 off.

And also if you want to actually use Webhealer to build your website, you'll also get some money off your build as well if you use that code. So I'll pop that in the show notes to help people.

But Dara, I was sort of wondering, you know, there's going to be people who are out, you know, like walking their dog. I've got one lady who wrote to me, hello Fi who said she goes on her. I can't think what it's called.

She listens to the podcast while she's on her sort of wobble board. Yes, she's on the wobble board who won't be able to write anything down at the moment. What's the most important thing for someone to remember?

Do you think about what we've been talking about? What would you like them to.

Well, I would say first and foremost is not to panic. This type of regulation can be a little bit overwhelming. But don't panic. There are solutions out there.

Think about the information you collect and you know, I don't want to, I don't want to say that the policy diaries, the only show in town. There are other services like Josephine, you have used.

The difference is I suppose we're very therapist focused and so the questions we ask you are specific to how you work. So there's a bit of familiarity there. But don't feel too overwhelmed about the whole process.

Just know that it has to be something that you do that's on your to do list and something that technically is overdue now. I mean Data Protection law has been out, UK GDPR has been out for a number of years. This is just another I suppose level that you need to adhere to.

It's changing of the laws.

If you had something in place previous, now the laws have changed a little bit and I would invite you just to review what you have and if you want you can email us@policydiary hellopolicydiary.com UK put it for my attention, mention the podcast and say, listen, I have some documents created already, here's a link. Etc, etc what do you think?

And for a limited time because I don't want to get into the world of GDPR consultancy but I will certainly review them and tell you the headline things that you may or may not be missing.

Yeah.

So look at, if somebody wants me to look at something by all means put it for my attention. Mention the podcast and I'd be happy to do so on a limited time basis only.

That's a really, really generous offer. I hope that's helped to make the changes to GDPR feel a little less daunting.

And you'll find the links to Policy Diary along with Dara's discount code in the show notes. As we were wrapping up the recording, I asked Dara one more question about something many therapists have been worrying about recently.

Are inquiries slowing down? And is it because AI is changing the way clients find us online? His answer was so interesting that I've decided to make it into a separate episode.

So do look out for that next week. And thank you for listening. Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community.

Good enough counsellors and for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it. Sa.