Mind in Bexley and East Kent Mind Confidentiality Statement and Privacy Policy
This statement outlines how Mind in Bexley and East Kent handles client information and records.
“At Mind in Bexley and East Kent we understand that all of the information provided by clients is confidential and private. We take great care to ensure that all client records are treated confidentially and with respect at all times.”
This leaflet explains how your information is recorded and records are managed.
- 1. INTRODUCTION a) Referral forms with information supplied by a GP or health professional
- b) Information supplied in any initial assessments or phone calls
- c) Clinical assessments and treatment plans
- d) Therapy session notes
- e) Emails, letters or any communication with clients
- f) Notes from any phone conversations
- g)
Any information we hold is stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018. Information that we hold may include the following;
2. IDENTITY OF DATA CONTROLLER
The data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 is Mind in Bexley and East Kent Limited. 2a Devonshire Road, Bexleyheath DA6 8DS.
3. USE OF INFORMATION
It is important that you provide us with accurate information so that we can provide you with the most appropriate care. We use information we hold about you for the following purposes:
• Providing treatment services to you (including communicating with you, your GP, your referrer, other medical advisers as appropriate);
• Retaining as part of your health record for 20 years after the end of your treatment
Any information we use for other purposes will be converted into a form in which
you cannot be identified and will be kept strictly confidential. This includes information;
• To improve the quality of our service by carrying out clinical audit;
• For analysing how our services are used and how we may improve our services in future;
• To teach and train healthcare professionals;
• To investigate complaints, legal claims or internal incidents
• To assist in research and development
• For compliance with any statutory or other regulatory requirements by providing anonymous information.
4. SHARING YOUR INFORMATION
Mind in Bexley and East Kent Confidentiality policy states that relevant information is only shared with people involved in your health care. This can include:
• Therapists or counsellors engaged by us to carry out our services provided to you;
• Your GP and your NHS referrer
• The Department of Health, CCG and other statutory bodies we are required to submit data to
We only share information with your family, friends or advocates with your permission. We will not pass your name to any other organisation for marketing purposes.
There are times when information must be given even without your consent, these would include; child protection, prevention of harm to yourself or others, the investigation or prevention of serious crime including terrorism, or a Court Order.
5. YOUR RIGHTS
If you do not want certain information recorded or shared with others involved in your treatment, please discuss this with the therapist or the service manager.
You have the right to see information held by us about you. Please contact the service manager if you wish to exercise this right. We will take the necessary action within a reasonable time. We reserve the right to charge a minimum fee of £10 for a copy of your records. We also reserve the right to take reasonable steps to confirm your identity before making any disclosure of information held by us.
6. AGREEMENT TO USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
As part of the provision of the therapy services to you it is important that you are able to:
• accept that the information provided may be shared with any relevant staff who contribute to your care.
• accept that this information will be used for the purpose of providing treatment to you.
• accept that Mind in Bexley and East Kent may use anonymised information for statistical purposes and that the law may allow in some circumstances for other agencies to be provided with information about you.
• accept that your information will be held securely on paper or in electronic format in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018.
• understand that you may withdraw your consent to share information at any time but this may adversely affect the services that you receive.
• understand that you have the right to restrict what information may be shared and with whom, but this may affect the provision of treatment to you
IF YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS about this statement or you wish to add limits to the information that is shared about you, please discuss this with a member of staff.
Our Privacy Policy
Transparency – We will always tell you what data we’re collecting about you and how we
use it. We only share your data with trusted partners and will never sell your data.
Security – We are committed to always follow industry best practices to ensure your data is stored safely and securely. We protect the confidentiality, accuracy and availability of the information we collect about you.
Control – We will always give you control over the communication that you receive from us. You can choose whether you want to stop receiving Mind in Bexley and East Kent communications.
Trust – We want everyone who supports us, or who comes to us for support, to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after or used.
This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or that could identify you).
The Mind in Bexley and East Kent Privacy Policy may change so please remember to check back from time to time.
1. Who we are
Here at Mind in Bexley and East Kent, we are committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.
We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“Data Protection Law”). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.
For further information about our privacy practices, please contact our Admin Office by:
• Writing to Mind in Bexley and East Kent, 2a Devonshire Road, Bexleyheath DA6 8DS
• Calling us on 020 8303 8932 Option 4
• Emailing info@mindinbexley.org.uk
2. How we collect information about you
In order to ensure that we can help people experiencing a mental health problem get the necessary support we want to make sure you receive the communications that are most relevant to you, be it through visiting our website or receiving emails, post or phone calls. We want to make sure you receive the best attention when you book on an event, become a member or make a donation.
• To process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
• To provide the services or goods that you have requested.
• To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, an event or services or goods you have requested.
• To comply with legislation.
• To keep a record of your relationship with us.
• Where you volunteer with us, to administer the volunteering arrangement.
• Where you are a client accessing our services, to ensure we provide you with
We collect information from you in the following ways:
When you interact with us directly: This could be if you ask us about our activities, register with us for training or an event, make a donation to us, ask a question about mental health, purchase something, apply for a job or volunteering opportunity or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you phone us, visit our website, make a purchase from our community cafes, or get in touch through the post, or in person.
When you interact with us through partners or suppliers working on our behalf: This could be through being eligible for clinical supervision, therapy sessions or as a volunteer counsellor which is delivered through trusted individuals working for us or on our behalf and always under our instruction.
When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as Just Giving or one of the other third parties that we work with and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.
When you visit our website: We gather general information which might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you.
3. Information we collect and usage Personal Information
Personal information we collect includes details such as your name, date of birth, email
address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making donation), as well as information you provide in any communications between us. You will have given us this information whilst making a donation, registering for an event or any of the other ways to interact with us.
We will mainly use this information:
the best services and to meet the needs of our funders’ monitoring procedures
If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your donation, sign you up for a particular event or provide goods and services you have requested.
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- • To contact you about our work and how you can support Mind (see section 8 on ‘Marketing’ below for further information).
- • To invite you to participate in surveys or research.
We may also use your personal information:
Sensitive Personal Information:
If you share your personal experience or the experiences of a friend or relative, we may also collect this health information. If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Information by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You can of course decide if you want to remain anonymous, if you are happy to share your personal details with staff members or if you would like us to share your story with the media or other parties as part of our work telling people’s personal stories about mental health.
4. Legal basis for using your information
In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent or because we need to use it in order to fulfil a contract with you. However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for Mind in Bexley and East Kent to process your information to help us to achieve our vision of ensuring that everyone experiencing a Mental Health problem gets both support and respect. Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance. Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, use your personal information for data analytics, conducting research to better understand who our supporters are, improving our services, for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission.
5. Marketing
We will only contact you about our work and how you can support Mind in Bexley and East Kent by phone, email or post, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner. However, if you have provided us with your postal address we may send you information about our work and how you can support Mind by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way. You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting info@mindinbexley.org.uk or clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication.
6. Sharing your Information
The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) at Mind in Bexley and East Kent so that they can support you. We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity. Mind in Bexley and East Kent may however share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us on or on our behalf to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction. We make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. Some examples of where we may share your information are with our partners who help us to process donations and claim Gift Aid and our partners who help us offer services.
7. Legal disclosure
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority); or, in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.
8. Keeping your information safe
We take looking after your information very seriously. We have implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.
Unfortunately the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site. Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that Websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites.
9. How long we hold your information for
We only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).
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- • Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge. Please make all requests for access in writing, and provide us with evidence of your identity.
- • Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.
- • Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
- • Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
- • Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
- • Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
- • Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.
- • No automated-decision making: We do not currently carry out any automated decision- making.
10. Your rights
You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting us at Mind in Bexley and East Kent on 0208 303 8932 and ask to speak with the admin team or please e-mail us at info@mindinbexley.org.uk or by writing to: Mind in Bexley and East Kent, 2a Devonshire Road, Bexleyheath DA6 8DS
Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.
11. Monitoring
Your communications with our teams (including by telephone or email) may be monitored and/or recorded for training, quality control and compliance purposes to ensure that we continuously improve our customer service standards.
12. Cookies Information
We do not collect cookies directly on our website, but do use Google Analytics
The Mind in Bexley and East Kent website is integrated with Google Analytics, which tracks website data. To do this, Google Analytics uses cookies to monitor visitors who are browsing through the site. We analyse this data in order to improve the website. For example, using cookies we can see how which pages a user is interested in. We then use such analysis to make improvements to the site in order to improve the user experience in the future.
