Privacy policy

Last updated 3 September 2026.

Repattern Counselling & Therapy is a private counselling practice operated by Kyle Lee in Takapuna, Auckland. This policy explains how your information is handled. It applies to counselling clients and to anyone who contacts the practice or uses this website.

Because counselling records are health information, the practice is a health agency under the Health Information Privacy Code 2020, which sits alongside the Privacy Act 2020. Both apply to everything below.

What is collected

• Contact details: your name, phone number, email address and, where relevant, your address
• The information you give when you enquire, by phone, text, email or through this website
• Counselling records: brief session notes, the reasons you have come, relevant history, and any risk or safety information
• Your GP or other health providers, where you choose to give them
• An emergency contact, where you choose to provide one
• Payment records, which are financial rather than clinical, and are kept separately for tax purposes

You are not obliged to give any of this. Some of it, particularly safety information, affects whether counselling can be provided responsibly, and I will tell you if that is the case rather than leaving you to guess.

How it is used

Your information is used to provide counselling to you, to arrange and confirm appointments, to invoice you, to meet legal and professional obligations, and to keep you and others safe. It is not used for anything else. It is never sold, rented or traded, and it is not used to build advertising audiences.

Confidentiality, and its limits

What you say in counselling is confidential. There are a small number of situations where that changes, and they are the same for every counsellor in New Zealand:

• Where there is a serious and imminent risk to your life or safety, or to someone else's
• Where there is a concern that a child or young person is being harmed or is at risk of harm
• Where information is required by a court order, a subpoena, or a specific statutory duty
• Where you give your written consent for information to be shared with a named person or agency

Wherever it is safe and practical to do so, I will tell you before information is shared, and I will share only what is necessary rather than the whole file. These limits are explained in the first session, not buried in paperwork.

Professional supervision

As required by the NZAC Code of Ethics, I discuss my counselling work in regular professional supervision. This is a quality safeguard and it is standard for every practising counsellor. Your identifying details are not used in supervision, and supervisors are themselves bound by confidentiality.

Storage and security

Records are kept securely. Electronic records are held in password protected, access controlled systems, and paper records, where any exist, are kept locked. Only I have access to counselling records. Where a service provider stores data on my behalf, it is chosen on the basis that it provides appropriate security safeguards.

Email and text message are not secure channels. Please do not send detailed personal or health information that way. Use them for scheduling, and keep the substance for the session.

How long records are kept

Health information must be kept for at least ten years from the date services were last provided to you, under the Health (Retention of Health Information) Regulations 1996. After that period, records are securely destroyed. Financial records are kept for seven years to meet Inland Revenue requirements.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code you have the right to ask for a copy of the information held about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if it is wrong. Requests are answered within twenty working days. There are limited grounds on which access can be refused, for example where releasing information would endanger someone's safety, and if that applies you will be told the reason and how to challenge it.

To make a request, contact [email protected] or call 021 0232 4389.

This website

This site collects only what you choose to send. Like most websites, the hosting provider keeps standard server logs, which may include IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting. Where analytics or advertising tools are used to understand how the site is found and used, they collect aggregate and pseudonymous data rather than counselling content, and no information from your counselling record is ever passed to them.

Nothing you do on this site is linked to your counselling file. Visiting a page about addiction, for example, does not create a record about you anywhere in the practice.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how your information has been handled, please raise it with me first at [email protected]. If you would rather not, or you are not satisfied with the response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on 0800 803 909 or through privacy.org.nz. You can also raise concerns with the Health and Disability Commissioner on 0800 11 22 33. See your rights for more.