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Privacy Policy

This privacy policy explains when and why we collect personal information; how we use it, keep it secure and in what circumstances we may share it with other organisations.

Who we are

Carers Support – Bristol and South Gloucestershire is a local independent charity and Company Limited by Guarantee. We provide a range of practical and emotional support services to unpaid carers of all ages across both geographical areas. Our main funders are; Bristol City Council (BCC), South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) and both NHS Clinical Commissioning groups whom we have agreements with to:

  • Identify carers through development work
  • Deliver a wide range of information, advice and support services
  • Carry out statutory carers assessments

Why do we collect information about you?

When you contact us for information, advice or support relating to your caring role you are engaging with us in an agreement for the provision of those agreed services (known as a ‘contract’ for lawful processing). Failure to provide us with the necessary personal information may result in us being unable to provide you with the service or could result in a delay in this provision.

When do we collect information about you?

We collect information about you when you register with us, request a Carers Assessment (whether direct or via a 3rd Party) or engage with carers support services including any on-line resources available from our website.

Any Carers Assessment will be undertaken on behalf of either BCC or SGC and all information relating to this assessment will be securely stored directly on their systems. You will be notified of this separately prior to any work being undertaken.

Details of how they {BCC and SGC} protect your information are available from their websites:

Bristol City Council Privacy Statement

South Gloucestershire Council Privacy Statement

If you request that we refer you to a 3rd party organisation we will only undertake this with your permission.

What information do we collect about you?

The personal information we collect will include your name, address, age, contact details, and details of your caring role.

We will also ask you for personal information such as your religious beliefs, ethnic background, sexual orientation and health, but this information will only be held with your explicit consent. The purpose for collecting this information is for monitoring purposes to help us ensure that our services are fully accessible and to inform the further development of these. It will not restrict your access to a service if you choose not to provide this detail.

If you provide information about a 3rd party (typically either the person you care for or an emergency contact) we will need to confirm that they are aware of this, the personal information that we hold and their rights under data protection legislation.

How will we use the information about you?

We collect information about you and your caring role, in order to:

  • carry out our obligations arising from any agreement entered into by you and us, for the provision of information, advice and support to you in relation to your caring role;
  • seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
    notify you of changes to our services;
  • send you communications which you have requested;
  • inform our future service development to ensure that these are fully accessible
  • provide anonymised monitoring information to our service commissioners to demonstrate the take up and effectiveness of services; with specific reporting by characteristics such as area, age, caring responsibility or background;
  • and, if you have agreed, send you details of upcoming activities, carer focussed news, and information about how you could support our work.

How long we hold your information

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you are registered for our services. However, for monitoring purposes this will extend to the end of the financial year after the point when you tell us that you are no longer a carer, or no longer require our services. For example, if you inform us in January, we will hold your personal data until the end of March that year.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis in line with legislation and best practice.

Who has access to your information?

Access to your information will be provided to partner organisations (as listed in the ‘Who we are’ section) for the specific purpose of providing you with the information or support requested. Your information will also be visible to any Carers Support – Bristol and South Gloucestershire staff member for the purposes of providing you with a service, or information that you have requested. Our database (CharityLog) is a secure cloud-based case management system and all internet traffic is via high security encrypted code so there is no possibility of your data falling in to the wrong hands.

Where information is passed to a 3rd party organisation in order to make a referral on your behalf, we will specifically ask your permission in advance.

Marketing

Carers Support – Bristol and South Gloucestershire does not undertake unsolicited marketing and will not sell, rent or otherwise share your information to 3rd parties for marketing purposes.

We do send out information about our services and updates relating to carers, legislation changes, initiatives, activities and requests for support typically via Carers News (our magazine), e-bulletins or other targeted communication.

Should you no longer wish to receive this information at any point simply let us know and we will ensure you are removed from our mailing list, by either using our online contact form or by telephone on 0117 939 2562.

Your rights under Data Protection

Your rights under Data Protection legislation are as follows:

The right to:

  • be informed. Met by access to this Privacy Policy.
  • access your own data and confirmation of how it is processed
  • rectification of any of your personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • You can withdraw consent for us to hold your sensitive data at any time, but most personal data is held under the service contract and in order to have this information removed you must agree to disengage completely from the service. Once information has been deleted it cannot be recovered.
  • restrict processing. When you request that processing is restricted it will be excluded until such time it has been confirmed that the data has been corrected or that it is being processed in the way that complies with the legal purpose.
  • data portability. You have the right to your personal data in a format that is machine readable.
  • object. You have the right to object to how we process your information.

With regards to your rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling Carers Support – Bristol and South Gloucestershire does not use profiling or automated decision making.

If you believe that any of your personal details need to be corrected, updated or you no longer wish to access the services provided by Carers Support then please call us on our CarersLine number 0117 965 2200 and we can immediately update our system.

If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information or to exercise one of the other rights, please use our feedback form or write to us at the address in the ‘How to contact us’ section, letting us know what specific information you would like. Please note that in order to establish your identity we will need to undertake security checks and will use the details already recorded on our system to contact you.

Profiling

Carers Support – Bristol and South Gloucestershire does not analyse your personal information for profiling purposes.

Our website

‘Cookies’ are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity.

For further information visit About Cookies or All About Cookies

You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our website features may not function as expected.

You can manage your cookie settings on this website by following this link.

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to our website and services so when you link to or from other websites you should read the privacy policies on that site.

16 or Under (Subject to review following enactment of the Data Protection Bill)

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ you will need to get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

As part of the services offered to you, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to servers within the European Union (“EU”) or countries and companies designated as adequate under the General Data Protection Regulation and provide similar protection to those located in the UK.

If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be not be governed by legislation to the same standard and we are not able to guarantee the security of your information.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on our web page.

Complaints

Whilst we hope that you do not feel the need to complain about how we protect your information we would invite you to contact us in the first instance using the address details below.

However, if you are unhappy with our response or you would like to report your concerns to the Information Commission Office direct then a link is available on their website https://ico.org.uk/ or call them on 0303 123 1113.

Feedback including our Compliments and Complaints procedure

How to contact us

You can contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy or the information, we hold about you.