Terms & Conditions

Your practice the counselling organisation you booked with provides your care and is responsible for your clinical information. Phila is the secure software the practice uses to run its work: booking, reminders, notes, documents and reporting. Phila never diagnoses, never provides the counselling itself, and never sells your information.

We use the details you give us to schedule your sessions, hold your slot, and manage any changes or cancellations. This is essential to provide the service, so it's a required part of booking. Please give as much notice as you can if you need to reschedule.

So your counsellor can support your care properly, they keep private clinical notes. These are confidential: only your counsellor and their clinical supervisor can read them, and every access is recorded in an audit trail. Practice administrators can see that a note exists and manage your appointments, but the note content stays with your counsellor.

We'll send appointment reminders and updates on the channel you choose WhatsApp, SMS or email. These help you keep your sessions; you can opt out any time and still keep your bookings.

Your information is special personal informationunder South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act. We hold it lawfully, keep it confidential, store it in South Africa, and record every access. We only use it to provide and improve your care and to run the practice never to market to you without asking. You have the right to see your information, correct it, or ask for it to be deleted.

Anonymous details like your age band and province may be used only for reporting to understand who the practice serves. These figures are aggregated and never identify you on any shared view. This is optional; you can decline or withdraw it without affecting your care.

Many practices are funded to help specific communities. With your agreement, your de-identifiedprogress can count toward a programme's funded targets as aggregate figures only, never a record of you. This is optional and can be withdrawn at any time.

If your practice uses Phila's AI note assistant, it only ever drafts notes for your counsellor to review, edit and sign and your information is de-identified first. Because this can involve processing outside South Africa, it is never bundled into these terms: it requires its own explicit consent, which you can give or refuse separately.

Where a session or deposit is payable, you pay the practice directly through a secure gateway. Phila orchestrates the request but does not hold your card details. Any deposit and refund terms are set by your practice and shown to you before you pay.

We may update these terms as the service grows. If a change is significant, we'll let you know. Continuing to use Phila after an update means you accept the revised terms.