Finding Felicity Counselling (“we”, “our”, or “us”) is committed to providing quality services and respecting your rights. Your right to privacy and confidentiality will be recognised, respected, and protected in all aspects of your contact with us. This statement outlines our ongoing obligations to you in respect to how we manage your Personal Information.
Finding Felicity Counselling is business registered in Australia, ABN 96 775 264 599. We comply with the requirements of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), as well as Code of Conduct for Certain Health Care Workers (Community Services Complaints Regulations 2019). We retain the right to amend this Privacy Policy at any time. Any modifications will be effective immediately.
What is Personal Information and why do we collect it?
Personal Information is information that identifies an individual. Personal Information includes Health Information, which is information about the physical or mental health or disability of an individual. Examples of Personal Information we collect include names, phone numbers, email address, residential addresses, date of birth, religious affiliation, and emergency contacts.
We collect your Personal Information in several ways including intake forms, interviews, correspondence by telephone, text message or email, via our website, from other publicly available sources, and from third parties where applicable with your consent. Finding Felicity Counselling will only request and retain Personal Information that is necessary to providing counselling services.
When we collect Personal Information, we will explain to you why we are collecting the information and how we plan to use it. We keep information, which forms part of our business record for a minimum of seven years. That is because we may need it in some way to support a claim or defence in court. That is also the period within which our tax collecting authorities may demand to know it.
Your Domain Name and E-mail Address
This information is recognised by our servers and the pages that you visit are recorded. We shall not under any circumstances, divulge your e-mail address to any person who is not an employee or contractor of ours and who does not need to know, either generally or specifically. This information is used:
- to correspond with you or deal with you as you expect;
- in a collective way not referable to any particular individual, for the purpose of quality control and improvement of our website;
- to send you news about the services to which you have signed up;
- to tell you about other of our services or services of sister websites.
Third Parties
Where reasonable and practicable to do so, we will collect your Personal Information only from you. However, in some circumstances we may be provided with information by third parties such as other health providers. In such cases we will take reasonable steps to ensure that you are made aware of the information provided to us by the third party.
Our Website
Our website is hosted on an Australian based server to comply with Australian data storage standards. The security of your personal information is important to us, but no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
To improve your experience on our site, we may use ‘cookies’. A cookie is a small text file that our site may place on your computer as a tool to remember your preferences. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our website.
Our website may contain links to other websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites, and these websites are not subject to our privacy policy. We are not responsible for the content of these websites or the privacy practices of these sites. If you navigate to other websites via our website, we advise you to read their privacy policy.
Although we do not disclose your personal information to any third party (except as set out in this notice), we do receive data which is indirectly made up from your personal information, from software services such as Google Analytics and others. No such information is identifiable to you.
Data Processed Outside Australia
Our website is hosted in Australia. We also use outsourced services in countries outside Australia from time to time in other aspects of our business. Accordingly, data obtained within Australia may be processed outside Australia and data obtained in any other country may be processed within or outside that country.
Use of Site by Children
We do not market to children, nor do we sell products or services for purchase by children. We do sell products and services for end use by children, but for purchase by adults. If you are under 18, you may use our website only with consent from a parent or guardian.
Storage and Destruction of Personal Information
Your Personal and Health Information will be stored in a manner that reasonably protects it from misuse, loss, and from unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure.
When your Personal and Health Information is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was obtained, we will take reasonable steps to securely destroy or permanently de-identify it.
Disclosure of Personal Information
Your Personal Information will only be disclosed:
- to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the life or health of you or another person.
- to outside agencies with your or your representative’s permission.
- with written consent from a person with lawful authority; or
- when required by law, or to fulfill legislative obligations such as mandatory reporting and court subpoena.
Access to your Personal Information
You may access the Personal or Health Information we hold about you, including to update or correct it, subject to certain exceptions. If you wish to access your Personal or Health Information, please email finding.felicity@hotmail.com.
To protect your Personal or Health Information we may require identification from you before releasing the requested information. You have the right to:
- request access to personal information we hold about you.
- access this information; and
- make corrections if you consider the information is not accurate, complete or up to date.
However, access may be denied in part or in total where:
- the request is frivolous or vexatious.
- providing access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals.
- providing access would be likely to prejudice an investigation of possible unlawful activity.
- providing access would pose a serious and imminent threat to the life or wellbeing of any individual; and
- denying access is required or authorised by or under law.
We aim to address all requests to access or correct information within 14 days. We will not charge any fee for your access request but may charge an administrative fee for providing a copy of your information.
Maintaining the Quality of your Personal Information
It is important to us that your information is up to date. We will take all reasonable steps to make sure that your Personal Information is accurate and complete. If you find that the information we have is not up to date or is inaccurate, please advise us as soon as practicable so we can update our records and ensure we can continue to provide quality services to you.
Content You Provide Us
If you provide information to us with a view to it being read, copied, downloaded, or used by other people, we accept no responsibility for what that third party may do with it. It is up to you to satisfy yourself about the privacy level of every person who might see your information. If it is available to the World, neither we nor you have no control whatever as to how it is used.
Financial Information Relating to Your Credit Cards
This information is never taken by us either through our website or otherwise. At the point of payment, you are transferred to a secure page on the website of Stripe. Your credit card details may be stored in Stripe for future payments. That page may be dressed in our “livery”, but it is not controlled by us.
Credit Reference
To assist in combating fraud, we share information with credit reference agencies, so far as it relates to clients or customers who instruct their credit card issuer to cancel payment to us without having first provided an acceptable reason to us and given us the opportunity to refund their money.
Complaints
When we receive a complaint, we record all the information you have given to us. We use that information to resolve your complaint. If your complaint reasonably requires us to contact some other person, we may decide to give to that other person some of the information contained in your complaint. We do this as infrequently as possible, but it is a matter for our sole discretion as to whether we do give information, and if we do, what that information is.
We may also compile statistics showing information obtained from this source to assess the level of service we provide, but not in a way that could identify you or any other person.
If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please send the details to finding.felicity@hotmail.com. We take complaints seriously and will respond as soon as possible.
OAIC contact details:
Officer of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au