Privacy & Confidentiality

Kate’s Place values your privacy.   Protecting your privacy and keeping your personal and sensitive information confidential is important to Kate’s Place.

This policy includes our procedures for collecting, storing, disclosing and disposing of the personal information of persons appropriately.

The personal information that the service collects includes:

1. contact details of children, families, staff/carers, students, volunteers and management;
2. children, families, staff/carers, students, volunteers, emergency contacts contact details;
3. children’s health status, immunisation, incident records, and medication records, developmental records and plans, behaviour guidance management plans, external agency information and custodial arrangements,
4. staff/carers documentation relating to recruitment and selection, performance reviews, qualifications, work history, child protection checks, health status, health insurance, immunisation records, workers’ compensation claims, contact and emergency contact details and bank account and superannuation details, tax file number and special needs;
5. student and volunteer work history, child protection checks; contact details, student reviews and plans, recruitment and selection documentation, health and immunisation status;
6. information relating to families’ Child Care Benefit (CCB) status and any other additional funding arrangements.

Kate’s Place ensures that all information collected from persons will be considered private and confidential and not disclosed without the prior knowledge or consent from the individual or legal representative. For children, their legal representative is their parent or guardian.

Methods of collecting personal information

We collect personal information that you provide to us through:

1. Expressing interest through putting your details on our waiting list;
2. Enrolling your child/ren in our service;
3. Processing Childcare Benefit payments;
4. Bank and other transaction activities you authorize us to conduct;
5. Complaints made by you with us;
6. Court orders you ask us, or we are required to observe;
7. Emergency contact
8. Information collected by our web site;
9. Information you provide to our consultants;
10. provided to us by our consultants;
11. competition entry forms;
12. bookings for training and events;
13. release forms and testimonials;
14. parent surveys;
15. when you register for newsletters; and
16. when you provide material to us to enable us to provide or improve our services to you.
17. We may also collect personal information about you that is publicly available from sources such as social media websites.

Use and disclosure of your information

We collect, hold, use and disclose personal information to:

1. fulfill our obligations to provide you with the services you have asked for;
2. assist third party educational or developmental specialists acting on your behalf;
3. perform transaction activities that you have authorised;
4. Keep you informed of relevant software and services that support your child’s early education and development;
5. Process Child Care Benefit or other government support payments;
6. To maintain a healthy and safe environment for your child/ren;
7. Enable secure access to our websites;
8. participate in the process of any third-party acquisition or potential acquisition of an interest in us or our assets;
9. process your transaction details for bank feeds; and
10. fulfil any legal and regulatory obligations.

1. Security of personal information
   1. 1. All personal and sensitive information in electronic form is kept in secure data bases that can only be accessed by staff who have the delegated authority to do so.
      2. If you are considering sending us any personal information by standard email, please be aware that the information may be less secure in transit. We are required by law to take steps to protect the security of personal information once it comes into our possession only.
      3. The security measures that we put in place to protect your information are audited from time to time to ensure that the service observes best practice and is compliant with all applicable aspects of the Privacy Act.

1. Information access and correction
   1. 1. Subject to any exceptions under the Privacy Act, if you have provided us with personal information, you have a right to request to access or correct it.   If you want to access or correct your personal information you should contact the office and put your request in writing.
      2. Once you have made your request for access or correction, we will respond within a reasonable period. To assist us in responding to your request, please include as much detail as possible about the particular personal information that you are seeking to access or correct (in order to help us locate it) and, if applicable, how you would like to access the information.
      3. We will provide you with a copy of or details of your personal information wherever it is possible and practicable to do so. Otherwise, we will work with you to find a mutually agreed alternative.
      4. If after exploring all options, we refuse to correct or give you access to your personal information, we will provide you with a written notice that sets out the reasons for the refusal (except where it would be unreasonable to do so), the mechanisms available to you to complain about the refusal and any other matters that the Privacy Act requires us to address.

1. Questions, concerns and complaints
   1. 1. If you want to make a complaint about a breach of your privacy by our service, you can contact us at the office during working hours. All complaints will be investigated by an appropriately qualified and senior representative.  We will endeavor to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible, and in any event within 30 days. If your complaint takes longer to resolve, we will keep you informed of our progress with the investigation including how we propose to resolve your complaint and what, if any, corrective measures will be put in place.
      2. If you require further information about our privacy complaints handling process or the progress or outcome of any privacy complaint investigation, please contact the CEO through the office.
      3. If you are not satisfied with our handling or resolution of your complaint, you can lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner ("OAIC"). For more information about making a complaint to the OAIC, visit http://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/making-a-privacy-complaint.

1. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will make any changes available to all families using our services. You can also obtain a copy of the most current Privacy Policy by either emailing or writing to the Privacy Officer at the service.

1. Disposing of personal information

Only information required by law will be retained and only for the period it is required to be retained.

Hard copies will be destroyed by a shredding machine.   Electronic records will be permanently deleted.

1. Notifiable Data Breach

If Kate’s Place becomes aware of reasonable grounds to believe an eligible data breach has occurred, management will promptly notify individuals at likely risk of serious harm. Management will also notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as soon as practicable through a statement about the eligible data breach.

The notification to affected individuals and the Commissioner must include the following information:

1. the identity and contact details of the organisation
2. a description of the data breach
3. the kinds of information concerned and;
4. recommendations about the steps individuals should take in response to the data breach.

1. Website
   we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, website visited immediately before coming to our site, etc. This information is used in an aggregated manner to analyse how people use our site, such that we can improve our service.
   We may from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Cookies are not malicious programs that access or damage your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website. Our website may from time to time use cookies to analyses website traffic and help us provide a better website visitor experience. In addition, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third party services such as Google Adwords. These ads may appear on this website or other websites you visit.
   Our site may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practises of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personal identifiable information.