Advent Advocacy Privacy Notice

Date of Last Review:  April 2022

Date of Next Review: April 2024

Here at Advent Advocacy, it is important to us that you know how we collect, store, use and retain data related to our advocacy work. This Privacy Notice sets out how we use personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you). We will let you know, by posting on our website or otherwise, if we make any changes to this notice. Your continued use of the service after notifying such changes will amount to your acknowledgement of the amended Notice. Advent Advocacy operates using the guiding principles of the Advocacy Charter. One of these guiding principles is the requirement for confidentiality.

The Advocacy Charter says,

‘Information held by the advocacy service about individuals will be kept confidential to the advocacy service. The advocacy provider will have a confidentiality policy which reflects current legislation. It will be clear about how personal information is held by the advocacy provider. It will also detail the circumstances in which data may be shared, the organisation’s approach to advocacy in the delivery of Non-Instructed advocacy and how the organisation responds if confidentiality is breached. Advocates must be aware of situations that require making a child or adult safeguarding alert.’

1. Advent Advocacy’s commitment to GDPR

At Advent Advocacy, we are committed to protecting your personal information. We make 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 data

2. What is Personal Data?

Personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable person, known as the ‘data subject’; it may include name, address, email address, phone number, location data and similar information. It may also include ‘special categories of personal data’ such as gender, marital status, racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs. We may process personal data and special categories of personal data which you or a healthcare organisation, charity or local authority provide in connection with the advocacy services about an individual.

The provision of certain personal data is mandatory for us to ensure referrals for advocacy services are undertaken appropriately.

We will only use this information:

• For the purposes of facilitating a referral, quality and equality 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. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others or children contacting us and sharing serious issues such as physical abuse or exploitation.

3. How do we use your personal data?

Advent Advocacy collects data to ensure we are complaint with the Advocacy Charter. The personal information data that we may collect about you helps us to ensure we can make our services accessible and equal (two of the guiding principles of the Advocacy Charter). Advent Advocacy will only process personal data, in accordance with applicable law, for the following purposes:

• providing the services that we are contracted to perform.
• responding to your queries, requests, and other communications.
• allowing you to use features on our website when you choose to do so
• sending you personalised marketing communications requested by you
• ensuring our security
• administering our service, including complaints resolution
• developing and improving our services.
• complying with applicable law, including responding to a lawful request from a court or regulatory body and the Information Commissioner.

The legal basis for our processing of personal data for the purposes described above will typically include:

• processing necessary to fulfil a contract that we have in place with you or other data subjects.
• your consent.
• processing necessary for our or a third party’s legitimate interest.
• processing necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject.

We may also ask you to complete a questionnaire on the advocacy service you receive. You do not have to submit these, and, if you do choose to submit, you are able to do so anonymously. We may use the information within the questionnaire to quality assure our service. We may also anonymously share the comments you make about the service.

4. How we collect information about you

We do this when you interact with us directly. This could be if you call Head Office wishing to speak with an advocate or when you self-refer to the service. Information is stored within confidential case notes.

We may also do this when a third party interacts with us on your behalf. This could be when a health care, social care or legal professional makes a referral to the advocacy service on your behalf.

5. Retention of personal data

Your personal data will be retained for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes listed above or as required by the law. This is 6 full years from the date of the last service delivery or for staff  6 full years from leaving for the majority of your data, after which time we retain name, address and period of time that was worked. We may keep an anonymised form of your personal data, which will no longer refer to you, for statistical purposes without time limits, to the extent that we have a legitimate and lawful interest in doing so.

6. Security of personal data

We have implemented technical and organisational security measures to prevent unauthorised access to your personal data. However, please be aware that the transmission of information via the internet is never completely secure. Whilst we can do our best to keep our own systems secure, we do not have full control over all processes involved in, for example, sending confidential materials to us via email, and we cannot therefore guarantee the security of your information transmitted to us electronically.

7. 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 (for example, because you have self-referred to the advocacy service, or someone has made a referral on your behalf).

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 Advent Advocacy to process your information to help us to ensure your advocacy service is person-centred and facilitated appropriately.

8. Sharing your Information

The personal information we collect about you will be used by your advocate. It will also be discussed for supervisory and case management purposes. This personal information will only include the initials of your first and last name, the place where we met you and an overview of the advocacy work undertaken, including and action plans and desired outcomes.

We only share your information with your consent. The consent-based sharing of information will only be undertaken with appropriate health or social care professionals or legal professionals. 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). We must also disclose information if the information is pertaining to harm to self, harm to others or illegal activity.

9. Data subject rights

You have rights in relation to your personal data. For further information about your data protection rights please visit the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO.) website.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

• Right to make a subject access request (SAR). Data subjects may request in writing copies of their personal data. However, compliance with such requests is subject to certain limitations and exemptions and the rights of other data subjects. Each request should make clear that a SAR is being made. You may also be required to submit a proof of your identity where applicable.
• Right to rectification. Data subjects may request that Advent Advocacy rectify any inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
• Right to withdraw consent. Data subjects may at any time withdraw their consent to the processing of their personal data carried out by us based on previous consent. Such withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on previous consent.
• Right to object to processing.
• Right to erasure. Data subjects may request that we erase their personal data. We will comply unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so. For example, there may be an overriding legitimate ground for keeping the personal data. This may include archiving/file retention obligations as defined by GDPR.
• Data subjects may request that we restrict our processing of their personal data in various circumstances. We will comply, unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so, such as, a legal obligation to continue processing your personal data in a certain way.
• Right to data portability. In certain circumstances, data subjects may request the controller to provide a copy of their personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have it transferred to another provider of the same or similar services. To the extent such right applies to our advocacy service, we will comply with such transfer request. Please note that a transfer to another provider does not imply erasure of the data subject’s personal data which may still be required for legitimate and lawful purposes.
• Right to lodge a complaint. We advise data subjects to contact us about any questions or complaints in relation to how we process personal data.

e-mail: admin@adventadvocacy.co.uk

Tel: 01325 776554