Sensing Friends Privacy Policy

We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) 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.
The Sensing Friends designated data controller office is Emma Crossland

1 Personal data we collect

We collect the personal data that you may volunteer as part of receiving our services, registering for events and completing evaluation surveys. Personal information we collect may include:
• your full name and title
• date of birth
• postal address, email address and phone number
• Information about your computer and about your visits to and use of our website including your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views.

We will also collect and hold information about any contact you have with Sensing Friends such as:
• key issues and actions when providing services to you
• contact preferences
• details of correspondence sent to you, or received from you
• any other information provided by yourself at the request of Sensing Friends

2 Sensitive Personal Information or Special Category Data

Sensitive Personal Information can include information about a person’s physical and mental health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.
We collect Sensitive Personal Information from you if you use our services by telephone, email or by other means and we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We use your personal sensitive information:

• for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, offering you support, quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide
• we will not pass on your details to anyone else without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances such as anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others.

3 What we will do with your data

When we ask you to provide your personal information we will let you know why we are asking, and how we will use your data, by directing you towards this notice.

Data we hold will be used by us to send you information by post, telephone or electronic means. This may include:

informing you about services or events related to Sending Friends
news and updates about Sensing Friends
dealing with enquiries and complaints made by you

4 Lawful basis for using your information

We will only use your personal information when we have your consent or because we need to use it in order to fulfil a contract with you (for example, because you have signed up to an event or service). We would need your express consent to send you updates about future events and will send you an email requesting this consent.

We would also need your consent to share any of your data with third parties in order to deliver our services to you.

However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. Sensing Friends legitimate interest in processing your information is to help us to achieve our vision of providing creative and peer support groups as well as one to one support and counselling for children and young people with a sensory needs and their family and friends also involved.

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.

If you use our services we will be storing data about you which is classed as ‘special category data’ because we will have info about your medical needs. In order to provide you with a service we need this information but we will not share this unless with your express consent.

5 Sharing your information

We may disclose information about you to Sensing Friends staff, volunteers and trustees as far as reasonably necessary for the purposes as set out in this privacy policy. In addition, we may disclose information about you:

to the extent that we are required to do so by law
in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings
in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk)

Except as provided in this privacy policy, we will not share your information with third parties unless with your express consent.

6 Security of your personal data

We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. Your data will be stored securely in locked paper files or electronically in password protected files and databases.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure password- and firewall- protected servers. Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

7 How long will we keep your data?

If you are a service user we keep your data for 7 years after you have finished working with us and then we shred and delete.

8 Your rights

If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting our Data Processor at Sensing Friends.

You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/

• 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 and how long we keep it for. 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. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. 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 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.

We understand that your personal information and privacy are important to you. We make every effort to ensure that the information you share with us is recorded accurately, retained securely and used only according to your wishes. We protect your personal information and adhere to all current data protection act legislation with respect to protecting privacy. We do not give out, sell or trade our mailing list data with third parties. The information you provide will be used primarily to deliver services to you, to gather feedback and also keep you informed about Sensing Friend’s activities. If at any time you no longer wish to receive communications from us by email or phone please contact us, see our website for contact details.

Sensing Friends Health and Safety Policy

1. Sensing Friends has a designated Health and Safety Staff Member (DHSSM) who has overall responsibility to carry out regular health and safety checks in relation to the venue, event or situation that Sensing Friends is facilitating.

Name: Pat Beach

2. The DHSSM will identify any risks in relation to the health and safety checks and resolve any identified risks to service users, staff and volunteers before attendance.

3. Any health and safety risk and the appropriate action taken is recorded in the health and safety risk book held by the DHSSM.

4. Sensing Friends has a designated First Aid Staff Member (DFASM) who has overall responsibility for dealing with any first aid. This Member of staff member will hold up to date appropriate first aid training and attend any event that Sensing Friends facilitates.
Name: Pat Beach, Emma Crossland, William Berkley Smith

5. The DFASM needs to make himself known to service users, staff and volunteers but also all staff and volunteers need to make sure they are aware of who the relevant DFASM is.

6. Any medical or first aid incident and any action taken is recorded in the incident book held by the DFASM. All relevant information in relation to this incident is then passed onto parent/ careers or others that need to know about the incident.

7. Any relevant health, allergies or medical conditions related to service users, staff and volunteers must be identified prior to attendance. Any action or support required in relation these conditions must be clearly explained to staff who will make sure the DFASM is aware of the situation.

8. Sensing Friends aims to have all staff first aid trained at a basic level.

This Policy was reviewed on
Date 16/09/2022
Signed by Chairperson Penny Wright

This Policy will be reviewed again on
Date 16/09/2023