After each session your counsellor writes a short note: the date, what was worked on, anything agreed, and any concern about your safety. It is four or five lines. It is not a transcript and it does not record what you said about other people.
Paper notes live in a locked cabinet in the office at Ruthven Road. The diary is electronic and holds your name and number only. We keep notes for seven years after your last session and then shred them.
Nobody outside the practice sees any of it without your written permission, with two exceptions we are obliged to tell you about at the start: a serious and immediate risk to your life or somebody else's, and a court order. Both are rare. Both would be discussed with you first wherever it is possible to do so.
You can ask to read your own notes at any time and we will sit down and go through them with you.