Privacy Policy

Carers in Hertfordshire takes your privacy and the security of your personal data extremely seriously. This Privacy Notice explains when and why Carers in Hertfordshire collects personal information, how we use it, keep it secure and in what circumstances we may share it with other organisations.

For more information about anything in this policy, please contact us on 01992 58 69 69, via contact@carersinherts.org.uk, or by writing to Carers in Hertfordshire, The Red House, 119 Fore Street, Hertford SG14 1AX.

Recording information

Data refers to personal information that we hold about you from which either on its own or in combination with other information, can identify you.

• In order to register you with Carers in Hertfordshire, we will record your data on our database. This includes:
  • Personal identifiers, contacts and characteristics, such as name and contact details
  • Details of your caring role and some limited information about the person/people you care for
  • Details of who referred you or how you came to know about Carers in Hertfordshire
  • Details of the consents you have given for us to process your information
  • Certain pieces of sensitive personal information (what is called ‘special category data’ in law) that you choose to share with us. This includes information about your age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and any disabilities or health conditions.
  • Details of Carers in Hertfordshire services or events that you access, any contacts you have with us, and information and advice we provide to you.
  • Details of any safeguarding concerns related to you.
• We obtain your data from information you give to us when you register, or from information we receive if we receive a referral for you from a third party, such as your GP.
• We record your information in order to:
  • keep an accurate record about you and your circumstances
  • avoid you having to repeat your story to us
  • enable us to communicate with you.
    • This may be via post or email, for example sending you mass mailings such as our newsletters, or for individual staff to contact you as part of services we are providing to you.
    • This may also be via phone, as part of a service we are. providing, to provide a Keep in Touch wellbeing call, or to let you know about services we offer that may be of interest.
    • This may be via text, for example to remind you about an event at which you have booked a place.
  • log interactions we have with you so that the relevant member of staff has a full picture
  • improve our services to carers and help other organisations to do the same
  • help ensure that you receive all support (including financial) you are entitled to.
  • report on our activities and impact to funders and other stakeholders.
• We will never sell your data to any third parties.
• The security of your data is of the upmost importance to us. We use leading providers of secure databases, which have robust procedures in place to securely hold your data.
• Where any of our databases are hosted abroad, we ensure that the security of your data is protected to the same standard as it would be in the United Kingdom.
• We will only hold your data for as long as is necessary.

Lawful bases for processing your information

Under the Data Protection Act (2018), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

(a) Your consent. You can remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting us on 01992 58 69 69, via contact@carersinherts.org.uk, or by writing to Carers in Hertfordshire, The Red House, 119 Fore Street, Hertford SG14 1AX. Please see below for information about consent.

(b) We have a contractual obligation, for example to a member of staff or a supplier.

(c) We have a legal obligation, for example to report payroll information to HMRC.

(d) To comply with employment, social security and social protection law, for example ensuring the health and safety of employees at work.

(e) We have a legitimate interest, such as to support us in achieving our aims as a charity

(f) To perform a task in the public interest, for example where this is delegated to us through a contract with a public body.

(g) In order to protect the vital interests of you or someone else, for example in the event of a medical emergency.

(h) It is necessary for a reason of substantial public interest. Providing a confidential advice or support service meets this definition, subject to certain safeguards, and we rely on this basis for holding information about the people that unpaid carers are caring for.

(i) To establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

(j) To provide health or social care, for example as part of our direct care services providing home care.

(l) For reasons of public interest in the area of public health, for example as part of public vaccination programmes.

Photographs, videos and publicity

• We sometimes take photographs or video at events for publicity materials.
• When we do this, we will either obtain consent from you via a written form or display notices at an event advising that we are making pictures and asking anyone who does not wish to be in them to make themselves known to staff.
• We store photographs and film securely on a database.

Applying for a job with us

We will collect and store the following information for 12 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process

• your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
• details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
• whether or not you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
• information about your entitlement to work in the UK
• With your consent, information which may assist us to measure diversity and equality.

Additional databases for specialist services

• We also deliver care and carer support as part of a number of specialist services, including the Make a Difference for Carers scheme, our Crossroads care service, our young carers service, the Hertswise community dementia service, the Community Navigators service and through our Admiral dementia nurses. If you receive support from any of these services, we will also record your information on the databases they use.
• We use these additional databases because they are more specialist and enable us to work with other partner organisations involved in delivering these services. By registering with these services, your data will be shared with the other organisations delivering the service, though it will only be used to deliver the service to you.
  • Hertswise – this service is led by Age UK Hertfordshire and delivered by a combination of them, Carers in Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire Independent Living Services (HILS), Herts MIND Network, Age UK Dacorum, Howard Cottage Housing Association, North Herts Minority Ethnic Forum, PoHWER and Herts Careline.
  • Community Navigators Service – this service is led by Watford and Three Rivers Trust and delivered by them, Carers in Hertfordshire, Age UK Hertfordshire, British Red Cross, Watford Housing Association, PoHWER, and Dacortium.
  • Admiral Dementia Nursing service – this service is delivered by Carers in Hertfordshire with Dementia UK.
  • Young Carers service – this service is delivered by Carers in Hertfordshire and is partly funded by a contract with Hertfordshire County Council. Our County Council contract requires us to use a specialist database that shares certain data with the County Council for some of our young carers’ services. Where this is the case, we will explain this to you.
  • Advocacy – this service is led by PoHWER and we host a carers specialist advocate. PoHWER use a specialist advocacy database which we use for advocacy cases only.

Consent

• We ask for your consent to communicate with you.
• You can choose whether or not to receive information by post, email, telephone or text message. Any choices you make will not affect the services you can receive from us.
• We also ask for your consent to send you our twice-yearly magazine ‘Carewaves’. You can choose to receive this by email or post.
• If you choose to receive any information from us by post, we may share your address with an external mailing company who send them out on our behalf. Your address will not be used by the mailing company for any other purpose.
• We also ask for your consent to store certain pieces of sensitive personal information (what is called ‘special category data’ in law). This includes information about your age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and any disabilities or health conditions. We will only store this data with your consent and will give you the option to decline to provide it.
• We record your choices on the databases we use.
• You can change your preferences at any time by contacting us.

Sharing relevant information

• We will only share your information to others in the following circumstances:
  • Where we are required to by law or a regulator (for example when we are inspected by the Care Quality Commission).
  • With your permission, where we are referring you to another service who can offer you support.
  • Where we are undertaking a task in the public interest or it is in our legitimate interests to share and it is in the interests of the recipient to receive the information.  If we share upon this basis, we will give you the opportunity to opt-out.
  • Where we are required to do so by a funder, in which case we will anonymise or aggregate personal data wherever possible.
  • With other organisations who help us to run our services. For example, if we had an ICT problem that needed resolving, our external ICT support company may need to access our systems in order to fix it and means them having access to records. We also use third party companies such as mailing houses to help us with sending out mass mailings. Any such organisations have contracts in place with us that require them to keep such information confidential.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

• Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
• Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
• Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Your right to object to processing – You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at on 01992 58 69 69, via contact@carersinherts.org.uk, or by writing to Carers in Hertfordshire, The Red House, 119 Fore Street, Hertford SG14 1AX if you wish to make a request.

User Surveys and Information on New Services

• As Carers in Hertfordshire’s services expand, there will be more opportunities to enhance the services provided to you.
• From time to time we may provide you with details of other services provided by Carers in Hertfordshire which may be of interest to you and offer you the opportunity to take advantage of them.
• We may also offer you the opportunity to participate in surveys carried out by Carers in Hertfordshire or its agents which help our research into the types of service we offer.

Our Website

• Like many websites, we collect visitor data such as the browser being used, screen resolution, approximate geographic area and the path that visitors take through the site. Any such data is only used to analyse use of the website and, consequently, make appropriate improvements. No personally identifiable data is gathered or stored in these files.
• The following is strictly necessary in the operation of our website. Our website will use cookies to:
  • Track the pages you visit via Google Analytics
  • Remember your preferences
  • Remember where you are in any order or registration process
• We use Google Analytics to monitor our website performance and how visitors may be using it. These cookies provide us with statistics and other information to identify areas that may need maintenance on our website and to discover where visitors may have come from to view our website. Google Analytics cookies do not collect any personal information – all information collected is anonymous
• Our website will not share any personal information with third parties.
• Cookies are very small text files that are stored on your computer when you visit some websites. We use cookies to help identify your computer so we can tailor your user experience, track content viewed and remember where you are in the site and any associated processes.
• When you visit our website, we will ask for your consent to use cookies.
• You can disable any cookies already stored on your computer, but these may stop our website from functioning properly.
• When you visit our website, we will place the following cookies on your computer:
  • _utma: This cookie helps to identify new or returning visitors and how long it has been since they last visited the website.
  • _utmb & _utmc: These cookies work together to calculate the time spent on our website. Both of these cookies expire at the end of your session.
  • _utmz:  this cookie will store this information when visiting our website from search engine results. It provides information on the search term typed in and which website visitors were on before visiting our website.

Complaints

• If you have any concerns or complaints about how we use your personal information, please contact us on 01992 58 69 69, via contact@carersinherts.org.uk, or by writing to Carers in Hertfordshire, The Red House, 119 Fore Street, Hertford SG14 1AX.
• You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk