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Privacy Policy

Who we are

OCfree (www.ocfree.co.uk) is an educational and signposting website run by Charlotte Brierley and Jessica Eden; together with any associates listed on the site from time to time. For the purposes of data protection law, Charlotte and Jess are the joint data controllers of the personal information collected through this website.

 

You can contact us about anything in this policy, or about your personal information, at hello@ocfree.co.uk. We are individually registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's independent regulator for data protection.

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This website and your care

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OCfree exists to help people understand OCD and related conditions, and to point them towards suitable treatment. It is an educational resource, not a clinical service. Reading this website, downloading a guide, joining our mailing list or attending a workshop does not create a therapeutic relationship with Charlotte, Jess or any associate, and none of the material here is a substitute for individual assessment or treatment.

Where the site signposts you to treatment options, whether that's one-to-one therapy, group work, a workshop or a referral elsewhere, a formal therapeutic relationship only begins once you have separately agreed to work with a named practitioner, usually through their own booking process and consent paperwork. That separate engagement will have its own, more detailed privacy information covering clinical records, which sits alongside this policy rather than replacing it.

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If you are in crisis or at immediate risk, please contact emergency services on 999, or Samaritans free on 116 123, rather than through this website. OCfree is not monitored around the clock, and messages sent through contact forms or email are not a substitute for urgent support.

The information we collect

We only collect what we need to run the website, respond to you, and deliver the educational content, workshops and programmes we offer. Depending on how you use OCfree, this may include:

  • Contact details you give us, such as your name and email address, when you fill in an enquiry form, sign up to our mailing list, or book a workshop or CPD training

  • Anything you choose to tell us in the free-text part of a form or an email, which may include information about your own or someone else's mental health

  • Booking and payment details when you book a paid workshop, training or programme, including transaction information handled by our payment provider

  • Technical information collected automatically when you visit the site, such as your IP address, browser type, device type, and pages viewed, gathered through cookies and similar technologies (see the Cookies section below)

  • Your engagement with our emails, such as whether you open or click through them, if you're subscribed to our mailing list

We do not ask you to submit clinical or diagnostic information through the general website, and we'd encourage you to keep enquiry forms brief and to avoid including anything highly sensitive until you're speaking with a practitioner directly through a secure, appropriate channel.

How and why we use your information

Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for everything we do with your personal information. Depending on the situation, we rely on:

  • Consent, for example when you opt in to our mailing list, or agree to cookies that aren't strictly necessary. You can withdraw consent at any time, and doing so won't affect anything that happened before you withdrew it.

  • Contract, for example when we need your details to process a booking or payment for a workshop, training or programme.

  • Legitimate interests, for example to respond to enquiries, keep the site secure, and understand in general terms how it's being used, always balanced against your right to privacy.

  • Legal obligation, where we need to keep or disclose information to comply with the law, for example financial record-keeping.

  • Vital interests, in the rare situation where someone's safety appears to be at immediate risk and we believe sharing information is necessary to protect them or someone else.

We use your information to: respond to enquiries; process bookings and payments; send you content, workshop or programme information you've asked to receive; improve the website and our offerings; and meet our legal and regulatory obligations. We do not use your information for any automated decision-making or profiling that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

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