Carers Network Privacy Notice

Carers Network is committed to protecting your personal information and our Privacy Notice gives you detailed information about when and why we collect your personal information, how we use it and how we keep it secure.

Legal reasons for collecting and processing information about you

Carers Network has two legal reasons for collecting personal data about you:-

  1. Legitimate Interests – we use the information we collect about you to provide you with our services, such as information and advice and access to our activities and events. By registering for our services you agree that we can collect your data for these purposes.
  2. Consent – whenever we ask you for personal sensitive data, for example your ethnicity or about any health conditions you may have, we must ask you for your consent to collect, record and store this data. If you use our services for a long time, you may be asked more than once for your consent.

Whenever we collect information about you, we make sure that we take your rights and interests into account and will not process information if this puts your rights at risk.

When we collect information

  • When you contact us to register as a carer
  • When you are referred to Carers Network by a third party, such as a Social Worker or your GP
  • When you access any online resources from our website
  • When we carry out a Carer’s Assessment

Information we collect

Information we collect includes your name, address, email address, contact details, date of birth and details of your caring role.

We also ask you for personal information such as your religious beliefs, ethnic background, health and sexual orientation. The purpose of collecting this data is to monitor our services to make sure that we are reaching all sections of the community, to make sure that all our services are fully accessible to everyone entitled to use them and to help us to make improvements or develop new services.  Your access to our services will not be restricted if you choose not to provide us with these details.

If you provide information to us about a third-party, usually this would be either the person you care for or an emergency contact, we will need to confirm that they are aware of their rights under data protection legislation.

How we use you data

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

  • Provide you with services you have asked for such as a Carer’s Assessment, information or advice, or assistance from any of our other specialist services
  • To notify you of changes to our services
  • To send you communications you have requested
  • To seek your views or comments on the services we provide

And, if you have agreed: -

  • Send you details of our events and activities, carer-focussed news and ways in which you can support our work, including fund-raising campaigns and activities

We also use anonymised data about the age, background, caring responsibilities and postcode of carers who use our services in order to:

  • Demonstrate that we are spending money given to us in donations, grants and contracts according to our charitable purpose
  • Demonstrate that we are meeting any contractual or legal obligations we may have
  • Ensure that our services are fully accessible and enable us to design improvements or new services

How we share information

Carers Network has contracts with a number of local authorities to carry out Carer’s Assessments on their behalf. Where a Carer’s Assessment has been carried out for you, we will share that information with the local authority concerned once we have obtained your signed consent, and the consent of the person you care for. If you have more than one Carer’s Assessment you and the person you care for may be asked for your signed consent on each occasion.

Each Local Authority has its own Privacy Policy and links to their policies may be found here:
City of Westminster
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

If you, or someone acting on your behalf, have asked us to make a referral, or a request for funds, to a partner organisation, we will share your information with them after seeking and obtaining your permission in advance.

Data Security and Retention

Your data is stored securely in our cloud-based storage system provided by Microsoft Office 365 and in our secure cloud-based database, Charitylog.  These systems are available only to registered users who have usernames and passwords to access the system.  Carer’s Assessments are stored in the local authority’s secure online database accessible only to named staff supplied with an encryption key.

The data we have collected about you will be stored securely in line with our data retention policies, usually for six years after you have stopped using services provided by Carers Network. Our retention policies are reviewed regularly to ensure they comply with legislation and best practice.

Marketing

Carers Network will not sell, rent, or otherwise share your information to third parties for marketing purposes.

We do send out information about our services and updates relating to carers, legislation changes, events, activities, and requests for your support in our newsletter, in e-bulletins and other targeted communications.

If, at any time, you decide you no longer wish to receive this information from us simply let us know and we will remove your details from our mailing list. To do this you can telephone us on 020 8960 3033 or send an email to carers@carers-network.org.uk

Your Data Protection Rights

Your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 are as follows:

You have the right to:

  1. Rectification

If any of the data we hold about you is incorrect or incomplete you have the right to have it corrected

  1. Object

You have the right to object to the way your data is processed

  1. Make a Subject Access Request

You have the right to ask for a copy of all the data we hold about you. 

  1. Refuse automated decision-making

Carers Network does not use profiling or automated decision-making

  1. Restrict

You have the right to ask us to stop processing your data until the data has been corrected or until it is established that the data is being processed in accordance with the law.

  1. Erasure

You can withdraw consent for us to hold your personal data at any time and where the data is not needed for legal or statutory purposes we will delete this information if you ask us to do so.  However, where Carers Network is acting on behalf of the local authority, for example carrying out a Carer’s Assessment, your request will be referred to the local authority concerned. Once your data has been deleted it cannot be retrieved.

  1. Portability

You have the right to have your data provided in a machine-readable form so that you can transfer it to another provider.

If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information or to exercise one of the other rights, please write to us, using one of the methods listed in the ‘Contact Us’ section below, 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.

Our website

Our website uses ‘cookies’. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer which are used to collect the information the server needs to deliver a tailored page to your computer. Cookies store the information until the next time you visit the site or until you move to a related site. They make browsing easier and faster. They can also be used to compile statistics about website activity. 

For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org

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.

Please scroll down for full information on how we use cookies.

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’s/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 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 will put updates on our website.

Complaints

If you have any concerns or complaints about the way we handle, process, or protect your data please contact us in the first instance using the contact details provided below.

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

Contact Us

You may contact us using our online contact form, or by email to carers@carers-network.org.uk or by phone to 020 8960 3033 or by post to:

Carers Network
Beethoven Centre
Third Avenue
London
W10 4JL

This privacy notice was last updated on 11 November 2021

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