Personal Information Protection Policy

Ian D. Larke is committed to safeguarding the personal information entrusted to us by our clients. We manage your personal information in accordance with Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act and other applicable laws. This policy outlines the principles and practices we follow in protecting your personal information.

What is personal information?

Personal information means information about an identifiable individual. This includes an individual’s name, home address and phone number, age, sex, marital or family status, an identifying number, financial information, educational history, etc.

What personal information do we collect? 

We collect personal information that is necessary and relevant to provide you with psychological services and manage our psychology practice. This information may include your name, address, date of birth, pronouns, health information, family history, credit card/payment information, and contact details. We generally collect information from our clients personally. We may also need to collect information from other sources such as teachers or allied health care providers, which we would discuss with you. We collect information in various ways, such as over the phone, or in writing/email, in person at our clinic, or over the internet. This information may be stored on our computer records systems and/or in handwritten records.

Consent 

We ask for consent to collect, use or disclose client personal information, except in specific circumstances where collection, use or disclosure without consent is authorized or required by law.

We may assume your consent in cases where you volunteer information for an obvious purpose (e.g., contacting us to inquire about services).

We ask for your express consent before initiating psychological services and may not be able to provide services if you are unwilling to provide consent to the collection, use or disclosure of certain personal information. Where express consent is needed, we normally ask clients to provide their consent orally (in person, by telephone) and/or in writing (by signing a consent form).

A client may withdraw consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information at any time, unless the personal information is necessary for us to fulfill our legal obligations. We will respect your decision, but we may not be able to provide you with services if we do not have the necessary personal information.

How do we use and disclose personal information?

We use client personal information only for the purposes for which the information was collected, except as authorized by law. For example, we use personal information in order respond to your inquiries, communicate with you about appointment reminders, and to provide you with psychological services.

In certain limited circumstances, disclosure of your personal information without consent is permitted or required by law. For example, when a minor is in need of protection; when disclosure is necessary to prevent immediate and grave harm to your life, someone else's life, or public safety; in response to an investigation or legal proceeding (e.g., a subpoena, court order, or legal process); or to collect a debt owed to our organization, should that be necessary.

How do we safeguard personal information?

We protect client personal information by making reasonable efforts to safeguard and secure the personal information we collect and to prevent any loss, misuse, disclosure or modification of personal information, as well as any unauthorized access to personal information. We have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the personal information we collect. For example, documentation is secured in locked filing cabinets and electronic data are encrypted and password protected. Our Website uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to transmit data from your connection to our systems, and also requires the use of two session “cookies” (small files containing information that a website creates when someone visits the website) called Test and Crumb. Test investigates if the browser supports cookies and prevents errors, and Crumb prevents cross-site request forgery (an attack vector that tricks a browser into taking unwanted action in an application when someone’s logged in). For payment operations, credit card-processing systems adhere to the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).

We retain records for varying periods of time depending on the age of the client at the time we provide services, and use appropriate security measures when destroying client personal information, including shredding paper records and permanently deleting electronic records once the personal information is no longer required to be maintained in accordance with regulatory requirements.

We will notify the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, without delay, of a security breach affecting personal information if it creates a real risk of significant harm to individuals.

Our Website may contain links or references to other websites to which this policy does not apply. We are not responsible for the data collection, use, and disclosure practices of companies or organizations to which our website may provide links. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit. See our terms and conditions for our Website here.

Access to records containing personal information

We provide our clients with copies of their assessment reports upon payment for services rendered. We may charge a reasonable fee to provide information at a later date after services are completed, but not to make a correction of factual information. We will advise you of any fees that may apply before beginning to process your request.

We make every reasonable effort to ensure that client information is accurate. If you are aware of an error in our information about you, please let us know and we will correct it on request wherever possible.

We rely on our clients to notify us if there is a change to their personal information that may affect their relationship with us.

How to Contact Us

If you have a question or concern about any collection, use or disclosure of personal information, or about a request for access to your own personal information, please contact Ian D. Larke.