GDPR — Data Protection

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enacted in the UK as the Data Protection Act 2018, shapes how the ABMT uses and stores personal information — and how our members handle information about their clients.

The data the ABMT holds about members

Our membership records include your name, postal address, phone number and email address, your practice website and practice address where relevant, the name of your insurance provider, and the name of your supervisor.

We use this data to contact you about membership renewal, to send newsletters and notices of meetings, and — where you request it — for your listing on the practitioner register on this website.

Your data is stored in password-protected files on an external device and is not shared with third parties, with one exception: if you are insured through the Association’s block scheme with Balens, we may share your name and contact details with them. We hold your data for eight years from the end of your membership, after which it is erased from our records.

Guidance for practitioners

As a professional association we take the ethical practice of our members, and the safety of their clients, seriously. The notes below summarise good data protection practice for biodynamic massage therapists; detailed guidance is available in the Information Commissioner’s Office guide to the GDPR.

Registration with the ICO is not currently required to join the ABMT, CNHC, UKCP or BACP, but a growing number of therapists choose to register as a mark of good digital data practice.

Note taking

• Keep clear notes on your sessions — they support the therapy and protect you should a client ever raise a complaint.
• Anonymise notes using a pseudonym or initials, and store the key that links names to pseudonyms separately from the notes themselves.
• Remember that clients have the right to see their notes, and that client notes can be required by a court of law.
• Personal, journal-style reflections may be kept as a separate set of notes — these need not be shown to clients or produced in legal proceedings, and should be stored apart from client notes.
• If you are insured through the Balens block scheme, it is a condition of the policy that you make client notes and keep them for seven years after the final session — failing to do so could invalidate your insurance.

Transparency with clients

Be as open as possible with clients about the personal data you hold on them. Names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth all count as personal data: if you hold it, tell your clients in writing what you keep, why you keep it, and for how long.

Questions about any of the above? Please contact the committee.