Privacy Statement
Aylesbury Women’s Aid is a charity and company limited by guarantee, working with and on behalf of women and children who are or have lived with domestic violence. We are aware that breaches of confidentiality may have the potential for life threatening consequences and are committed to maintaining the highest standards of confidentiality in all of our work, in order to ensure the safety and well-being of clients and employees.
This privacy statement outlines when and how we collect your personal information, and how it is used and stored, as well as information about your rights to access information we hold about you.
Personal and sensitive data is any information that relates to a living identifiable person.This may include your name, contact details and other information that we gather as part of our relationship with you.We only process data if we need it for a specific purpose, as explained below, and we only keep it for as long as is necessary before securely destroying it. Some retention periods are based on legal requirements while others take into account practical needs to keep the data. Aylesbury Women’s Aid may change this policy from time to time and you should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from May 2018.
Clients
In order to provide help and support to women affected by domestic violence and abuse, we collect your name and contact details, relevant information about your situation, and what help and support you need. This is so we can provide our services to you, which may include refuge, outreach or Independent Domestic Violence Advocate (IDVA) services, counselling and/or children and young people’s services. We will also ask you for feedback on our services.
We may receive information about you from other professional or voluntary agencies. In most cases your consent will have been received from that organisation to share your information with us. There may be some exceptions to this, for example, where there are concerns relating to safeguarding.
When we receive referrals for men experiencing domestic abuse, these are referred to a Male IDVA worker outside Aylesbury Women’s Aid. We will ensure that we have your consent for this information to be shared.
We process your information on the legal basis of our legitimate interests of being able to support you in the most appropriate way, as well as to understand how effective our services are. Where we need consent for processing certain information we will make that clear at the time we gather that information.
We will always be careful about how we contact you and keep your information strictly confidential.So that we can best support you, your personal information may be shared, with your permission, to organisations such as the police, fire and rescue services, health and social care organisations, educational establishments, and other third sector organisations. You will be kept up to date when this information has been shared. However, there may be some circumstances in which there are we may need to share your information without your consent. This may be to ensure the safety of vulnerable children or adults, as a duty to the courts, or in the prevention or detection of a crime.
Children and Young People
In order to support children and young people affected by domestic violence and abuse, either in their families or as part of their own intimate relationships, we provide a range of support services such as Helping Hands, AWAre and the Expect Respect programme run with our Youth Worker.
We collect young people’s name and contact details, information about their situation and what help and support they made need. We also ask them for feedback on our services. Referrals into the services are through parents or other professionals. For services offered directly to children aged 12 and under, parental consent for participation and data collection is required. For young people aged 13 and older, parental consent as well as agreement from the child is required for participation and data collection. A privacy notice for children and young people is available and provided to them when they participate in our services.
Supporters
We rely on donations and membership to support our services, which are provided free to those who need them. To process donations, we collect your name, contact details, and information about the donation and any Gift Aid. This is based on the legal basis of pursuing our legitimate interests of receiving donations to support our work.
Colleagues
When you apply to work for us, as an employee or as a volunteer to provide our services, we collect information as part of the application and recruitment procedure including your name, contact details, and experience. We also ask for references and criminal information. When you work with us we will continue to process your personal data in order to manage our relationship with you. This processing is based on the legal basis of it being necessary for your employment contract or for pursuing our legitimate interests of managing the employee/volunteer relationship, and protecting the people we provide services to.
Other People We Work With
When we work with you to provide education or training we will process your name, contact details and some information about your work, in order to arrange and manage the provision of appropriate sessions. We will also ask you for feedback on the education or training. This processing is necessary for the contract to provide the sessions, and for pursuing our legitimate interests of evaluating and improving our education and training offer.
We are a member of the Women’s Aid Federation of England (WAFE), and we take part in national research to improve the kind of support women, children and young people receive around domestic abuse. We share anonymised statistical data with WAFE to support research and campaigning for more and better services to support those experiencing domestic abuse. No information that could identify you will be shared or made public as a result of this research.
We also share anonymised statistical data with commissioning services as well as other funders to demonstrate the impact of the services we are funded to provide.
Security of Records
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access, disclosure or loss, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect and hold.
Our client database Oasis, is operated by IT Works and is held on secure servers in the UK. Our employee files are held in hard copy as well as electronically on protected computers.Hard copy records of any personal information relating to supporters, clients or colleagues are locked away at our offices or in our secure archive facility, until they are securely destroyed at the end of the relevant retention period.
We make sure that personal information is only seen by people who need to view it for their work, and that Aylesbury Women’s Aid workers are trained in protecting information.
Aylesbury Women’s Aid is audited annually, and this report is submitted to the Charity Commission. Our financial procedures are reviewed regularly by our board of trustees.
We will not sell, distribute, lease or otherwise share your personal information with third parties, apart from the ways we have explained above, unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so.
Website
Our website is available to members of the public to provide information about our support services to you, as well as information about other agencies who may be able to support you.This section is about your privacy using our online services.
We use cookies to collect information about pages that have been viewed and your journey around our website. Cookies are small data files placed on your computer or other devices that you may use to browse our website. They do not collect personal information about you but help us improve our website.You will find details on how to block and delete cookies from your computer by exploring the setup of the browser you use. All browsers offer the ability to block cookies, or remove them.
We also use Google Analytics (a third-party service) to collect and analyse how our website is used and improve the services we offer online. Information that is collected by Google is anonymised, and we do not make any attempt to find out the identities of those using our website. Information will not be kept for longer than 14 months.
When you contact us through our website using the online form, this information will be held securely by us, and will only be used for the purpose of responding to your query. Information may be shared with the most appropriate member of Aylesbury Women’s Aid who will contact you to discuss your query and will provide you with more information about our confidentiality process. Information may be shared with other agencies in instances of child protection issues, protection of the vital interests of an individual (i.e. a life or death situation), or we are required to share information by law or to assist in the prevention or detection of a crime.
If you are concerned about providing your personal information online, you can contact us on 01296 437 777. We also provide advice and guidance on how you can best manage your safety online by clearing your internet history.
Where we provide links to external sites for other services that may help you, this privacy notice does not cover the links within this site to other websites or services, and you will need to check that site’s privacy statement.
Your Rights
You may request details of personal information which we hold about you. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please contact us using the details below. There are some circumstances where this data may not be shared with you – if we believe that receiving the information has the potential to cause harm to you (or another person), or where your identity has not been confirmed. Information requested by children or young people may not be provided where they are not deemed to be mature enough to understand the nature of their request.
If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please speak to your support worker in the first instance. You can also contact us using the details below, as soon as possible. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.
If we are relying on your consent to process your data, you can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us.
You have a right to object to, or restrict, the way we process your personal information in some circumstances, or to ask for your information to be erased. To make a request about any of these rights, please contact us, using the details below.
If you wish to complain about how your data has been processed or require more information about how we manage your data, please contact the Head of Services in the first instance, using the details below.
You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about the way in which we process your personal information. You can make a complaint on the ICO’s website https://ico.org.uk/.
How to Contact Us
Email: enquiries.awaid@outlook.com
Telephone: Outreach Office: 01296 437 777.
Refuge Services: 01296 436 827.
Post: Aylesbury Women’s Aid, PO Box 85, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP21 8WA.
This privacy notices was last updated in May 2018 and will be reviewed again in May 2019.
