Privacy notice

Who is responsible for your information

I am Anna Pifko, a self-employed doula trading as Happy Birth with Anna. I decide how your information is used, which in data protection law makes me the data controller.

You can reach me at anna@happybirth-doula.co.uk or on +44 7392 042469. I work from Lordswood, Chatham, Kent; my full postal address is available on request.

What I collect

When you first get in touch I hold only what you give me: your name, the way you prefer to be contacted, and whatever you tell me about your situation.

If we go on to work together I will also hold your due date or your baby’s birth date, your birth preferences, the notes I make during our sessions, and the details of your booking and payments.

Much of this is health information — your pregnancy, your birth, how your body and mind are recovering, and sometimes past experiences that affect how you feel about giving birth. Data protection law treats health information as a special category that deserves stronger protection, and I treat it that way.

Why I am allowed to hold it

For your contact details, booking and payment records, my lawful basis is that I need them to provide the service we agreed and to meet my obligations as a business.

For health information, my lawful basis is your explicit consent. I will ask for that consent clearly, you can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing it will never affect the support you receive.

Where the law requires me to keep records — tax records, for example — my basis is legal obligation.

Who else can see it

I do not sell your information and I do not share it for marketing. A small number of companies handle parts of it because I use their services to run my practice:

• Calendly — the times and details of the meetings you book with me.
• Revolut — your name and the amount, when I send you a payment link or an invoice.
• Google Workspace — my email, which is where written correspondence with you lives.
• WhatsApp and Telegram, if you choose to message me there. Those conversations sit on their systems under their own terms.
• GitHub Pages, which hosts this website. Like any web server it records visits, including IP addresses, in its own logs. I cannot see those logs and I hold no analytics of my own.
• My insurer and my professional body, Doula UK, but only if a complaint or a claim were ever made.

I also take part in professional supervision and mentoring, where difficult situations are discussed to keep my practice safe. Nothing shared there identifies you.

If your employer or health insurer reimburses doula support, the invoice you give them comes from you, not from me. I do not send your information to them.

Photographs

I never photograph you, your baby or your birth without asking first, and I never use a photograph publicly without your separate written permission. Saying no changes nothing about your care, and you can change your mind later and ask me to take a photograph down.

How long I keep it

Enquiries that do not lead to work are deleted within twelve months.

Where I have supported you through a birth, I keep my notes for twenty-five years, in line with the retention period the NHS applies to maternity records. This is because a child can bring a claim about their own birth long after it happened, and those notes may be the only account of what took place.

Financial records are kept for six years, as HMRC requires.

After those periods the records are securely deleted.

Where your information is held

My notes and correspondence are stored in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Some of the companies listed above are based outside the UK; where that is the case, transfers are covered by the safeguards those companies are required to have in place, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

Cookies

This website sets no cookies. There is no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and nothing is loaded from an outside company when you open a page — the typeface is served from this site. Links to Calendly, WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram open on those companies’ own sites, where their own privacy terms apply.

Your rights

You can ask me at any time to:

• show you a copy of everything I hold about you
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete what I hold, unless I am legally required to keep it
• stop using it in a particular way, or pause my use of it while a concern is sorted out
• send it to you, or to someone else, in a portable form
• withdraw your consent to my holding health information about you

Write to anna@happybirth-doula.co.uk and I will respond within one month. There is no charge.

If you are unhappy

Please tell me first — most things are quickly put right. If you would rather not, or if my answer does not satisfy you, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. You can go to them directly at any point; you do not need to come to me first.

Changes to this notice

If I change how I handle your information I will update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant and affects people I am currently working with, I will tell them directly.