Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

CARTC — the Centre for Addiction Research Therapy and Counselling — is a centre for drug and addiction therapy. This policy explains what personal information we handle when you use our website and member app — including counselling sessions, the peer forum, the recovery library, and clinic booking — and the choices you have.

2. The information we handle

We collect the minimum needed to provide the service:

• Account basics: a username you choose, an email address, and authentication credentials. If you sign in with Google, we store the identifier your Google account provides — never your Google password.
• Anything you write: forum posts, session notes, messages to the team, and your bio if you write one.
• Booking details: appointment times and anything you choose to tell a counsellor before a session.
• Technical records: security logs (for example, sign-in events) kept to protect accounts, and the preferences described in our Cookie Policy.
• Email subscriptions: your address and consent status if you ask for recovery notes.

3. Health information deserves extra care

What you share about substance use and recovery is sensitive. We treat it as confidential by design: it is visible only to you and the care team involved in your care — not to other members, and not used for advertising. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

4. How we use information

We use the information above to:

• Provide the service: your account, sessions, community, library, and bookings.
• Keep people safe: moderating the forum against harassment, spam, and imminent-risk content, and maintaining security audit logs.
• Communicate: service emails (such as security notices or booking confirmations) and, only with consent, recovery-note emails you can unsubscribe from at any time.
• Improve the platform: aggregated, de-identified patterns — never your identifiable content.

5. Who can see what

Counsellors see what you share with them and what you choose to put on your record. Other members see only your chosen username and what you post in community spaces. Administrators see technical account data strictly for operations and safety. We never publish anything you share in a session.

6. Third-party processors

We rely on a small set of service providers to operate (for example, hosting and email delivery). Each is bound by contract to process personal information only on our instructions with appropriate safeguards. If you sign in with Google, Google handles that authentication under its own terms; we receive only your account identifier and basic profile fields you approve.

7. How long we keep things

Account data is kept while your account is active. After you delete your account, personal data is removed or de-identified within a defined window, except where we must retain records for legal, safety, or clinical-governance reasons. Security logs are kept for a short, fixed period.

8. Your rights and choices

You can:

• Access and correct your personal information.
• Delete your account and ask for erasure of your data.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent (for example, for emails) at any time.
• Ask for a copy of your data in a portable format.
• Ask to speak with a human about any of the above — a person reads every request.

9. Crisis situations and legal requests

If we believe someone is in immediate danger, we may follow our duty-of-care procedures, which can involve contacting emergency services. We may also disclose information where the law strictly requires it — and we push back on overbroad requests.

10. Children

The platform is not directed at children under the age of digital consent in your region, and accounts require meeting that age. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we close it and delete the data.

11. Changes and contact

We update this policy when our practices change and note the date above. For any privacy question or request, use the contact page — or write to the team at the address given there. Your use of CARTC after an update means you accept the revised policy.