Your Privacy & Confidentiality

We record information about you, including:

• Name, age, contact details and who to contact in an emergency.

• Information for our statistics such as ethnic group and language spoken.

• Medical and disability information if we need it for some services and activities.

• Information about your life, health, welfare, support needs, conduct/actions, goals, thoughts and feelings, but only if it is relevant to the services we are providing to you, and you ask us to help with these issues.

Our Team and your Privacy:

Our team means: ALL PROGRAM STAFF INCLUDING ADMIN STAFF. Limited personal information may be shared with other Community Action teams to manage high risk and safety.

Occasionally when you tell something about yourself to one member of our team, or when one of us observes something about you, we will tell the other members of the team, so that we can all work together to assist you.

We respect everyone’s right to confidentiality. Usually your personal information stays within our team. This means we don’t tell things about you to anyone outside of our team without your consent, unless one of the following applies:

• We report harm and/or risk of harm to under 18-year old’s (this can include underage sex with adults);

• If you or someone else is in serious danger/risk (eg. suicide, violence, drug overdose, medical emergency etc), or there is a need to assess and manage domestic and family violence risk and/or child protection risk, we tell people who can help;

• We will tell the police about a serious crime you or someone else did;

• If you commit a crime at the agency or refuse to leave if we ask you to, we will call the police;

• If you are reported to the police as a missing person, we will tell the police that you are OK;

• If the Police get a search warrant or the court asks for your file via subpoena we must comply.
• It is reasonably necessary to establish, exercise or defend a claim at law.

You can see the information we record about you:

We will let you see the information we have about you (on paper and on computer), if you ask. If you think that any of that information is wrong, then:

• If we agree that it is wrong, we will correct it; or

• If we don’t agree that it is wrong, you can write out what you think the truth is, and we will add your version to our version of the information.

You have the right to make a complaint:

If you are not happy about the way we have handled your privacy or confidentiality:

• Talk with a worker about it or ask to speak with the Manager.
• You can also ask to see our Complaints & Appeals Handling Procedure – it is your right to lodge a complaint.
• If you have lodged a complaint but you are not satisfied with our response after forty-five (45) days, you may lodge your privacy concerns with the Qld Office of the Information Commissioner and/or the Qld Human Rights Commission.
• If you are a victim of domestic and family violence, you have rights under the Charter of Victims’ Rights that our domestic violence services must uphold, including your privacy.  You can lodge a complaint directly with Community Action or you can lodge a privacy complaint with the Victims’ Commissioner.

Please note: The Right to Information Act (Qld) 2009 applies to Community Action records which are held by the State Government.