Protecting Your Privacy

Anglicare provides a range of services and collects personal information to ensure a holistic approach to the care we offer. We recognise and respect every person’s right to privacy, dignity and confidentiality.
We will:

• Provide environments that enable residents & clients to maintain relationships with privacy and dignity.
• Promote respectful relationships between all staff, residents, clients and their representatives.
• Ensure compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (The Act) and the 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) outlined in the Act
• Be open about how we manage your personal information.

If you ask us, we can give you more information about how we protect your privacy

Collecting and Storing Information

When you contact Anglicare to access our services we will ask you questions about yourself so we can provide support that meets your needs and preferences.
We prefer to collect personal information directly from the person it relates to, however, in some cases this may be impracticable, or the information might be held by someone else.
This could include:

• medical records held by your current or previous health care provider;
• financial records held by an accountant or Centrelink; or
• next of kin details.

You do not have to provide us with all the information we ask for, however it might limit the types of services we can offer you.
We store your information in several secure forms. These include:

• paper records stored in secure cabinets and buildings
• paper records that we are required to keep for legal reasons archived in secure storage
• online data bases where data is entered and stored securely and access is restricted within Anglicare to those who need to access the information in providing service to you

Anonymity or Pseudonymity

You can enquire about our services anonymously or by use of a pseudonym. We will be able to discuss services that might be suitable, including costs which might be charged for those services. However, we cannot provide services to someone without confirming their identity. Until we have sufficient information to provide a detailed quote or outline of suitable services we can only give general, non – binding information.

How we use your information

Generally, we will use your information to:

• assess your eligibility to access our services
• adjust services to meet your specific needs
• determine if you need to make any payments
• contact you to discuss the services you are using and give you the opportunity to tell us what you think about your experience with Anglicare
• discuss the services you are using with your family or next of kin, provided you have given us consent to do so

We may also use your information for a secondary purpose such as research or marketing if:

• you have consented, or
  where it is impracticable to seek consent, we will give you the opportunity to opt out of further communications.

There are also limited, serious circumstances where we will disclose personal information to third parties without your consent:

• where we reasonably believe it is necessary to reduce or prevent a threat to a person’s life, health or safety or a serious threat to public health or safety;
• where the use or disclosure is required by law;
• where we reasonably believe that the use is necessary for law enforcement, public revenue protection, preventing or remedying of serious improper conduct, or conduct of court or tribunal proceedings, either by or on behalf of an enforcement body.

If we use or disclose information without consent we will record each instance in writing

Data Processing

Anglicare uses third party systems to process some of the data we collect, including some providers that are based outside of Australia. In all instances we ensure the contractor has appropriate controls in place to comply with the requirements of the Privacy Act and our Privacy Policy.

Accessing and Correcting Personal Information

If you ask us we can normally give you access to your personal information. However, we may deny a request for access if:

• The information poses a serious threat to the life or health of any person.
• Releasing information would impact upon another person’s privacy
• The information relates to existing legal proceedings
• Providing access would be unlawful.
• The information relates to a sensitive decision about how we operate our business

If you would like to access or change your information, you can contact Anglicare. It will be necessary for you to verify your identity, and you may need to visit an Anglicare site to access the information you would like to see.

In cases where we need to access old or particularly large amounts of information we may need to charge you a small fee for the time it takes to retrieve the records.
If we do not give you access to your information, we will explain why.

Data Security

We will implement measures to protect your personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, change or disclosure.

We will destroy or permanently de-identify personal information when we no longer need it or it is no longer required to be kept for legal purposes.

We will protect the security of your information during transmission by using software that encrypts information that you input


Data Breaches

The Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act 2017 requires us to let you know if your information is impacted by a data breach. This means we will let you know in the way we normally communicate with you, if:

• There is unauthorised access to or disclosure of your information; or your information is lost and unauthorised access or disclosure is likely to occur; and
• There is a reasonable chance that this could cause you serious harm (which can include physical, physiological, emotional, economic or reputational harm); and
• We have been unable to remedy the situation in line with the Act.

If we are unable to contact any affected parties individually we will post a notification that an eligible data breach has occurred on our website.

In such circumstances we are also required to inform the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

We will follow our Notifiable Data Breach Procedure in these instances.

Identifiers

We will not adopt Commonwealth Government identifiers for use as our own identifiers. If we are required to collect a government identifier to provide you a service, we will not use this number to identify you in our systems.

Sensitive Information

Generally, we will only collect sensitive information with an individual’s consent, except where:

• The collection is required or authorised by law or to establish, exercise or defend a legal or equitable claim, or;
• It is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious or imminent threat to the life or health of the person who is the subject of the information.

Sensitive information includes things like your ethnicity, your religious beliefs, if you have a criminal record or information about your health. A full definition of sensitive information is included in the Privacy Act 1988

Donations

Anglicare gathers and retains personal information from donors which is managed in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Security Data Standard.
Donation processing is secured by encryption or masking to protect the transfer of personal and financial information. Each donation is secured, and credit card details are not stored by Anglicare. The only information collected and retained is the amount donated, transaction date and contact details as completed on the donation form
Where donations are made over the phone or via email, a copy of that donation is retained for tax and audit purposes in a secure location.

Complaints

We value your feedback on how we have treated your personal information. If you are not happy about how we protected your privacy, please contact the Privacy Officer:
Phone: 9895 8091
Email: privacy@anglicare.org.au
It is helpful if you can tell us:

• How you think your information might have been misused,
• The details of any of our employees involved.

The Privacy Officer might ask for extra information to help them understand your circumstances and act to resolve the issue. We will keep you updated on how we are addressing your complaint
If you aren’t happy with how we have dealt with your complaint you can ask for it to be referred to mediation. If you are still unhappy you can refer your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.