MYMY PRIVACY STATEMENT

At MYMY, privacy is at the heart of what we do

We are committed to protecting your privacy and the personal information that we hold. We will do our best to use your personal information in accordance with data protection law, and not do anything with your information that you wouldn’t reasonably expect.

The purpose of this statement is to be clear and transparent about how MyMy uses your personal information. This privacy policy applies to people who use our service, our supporters, our customers, our volunteers as well as the general public and visitors to our premises.

Changes to this Privacy Statement

As the service we provide changes, we may need to alter this Privacy Statement. Please check this page occasionally to see if we have included any updates or changes, and that you are happy with them.

If you have any queries about this statement please contact MyMy at 19, Dundrum Rd, Newcastle, Co. Down, BT33 0BG or email hello@mymy.org.uk.

We may use your personal information for the purpose set out in the policy, which include:

To provide you with support

We support people in a number of ways, including by telephone, letter, email, and face-to-face. When you talk to one of our volunteers, we may record certain information about your contact with us. See ‘Privacy Information for Callers’ for further information.

When you volunteer with us

When you apply to volunteer with us, we process your personal information for the purpose of assessing and progressing your application. Please see ‘Privacy Information for Volunteers and Potential Volunteers’ for further information.

When you donate to us

When you donate money to MyMy or one of our branches, we need to collect and use certain information about you in order to process your donation. Please see ‘Privacy Information for Donors and Supporters’ for further information.

Privacy Information for Counselling Clients

Counselling provides a safe space for you to talk and those conversations stay between you and your counsellor. MYMY keep written records of your contact details and counselling/therapy sessions. These are maintained in a confidential and secure manner by your counsellor in a locked file and in compliance with GDPR. The file belongs to MyMy and records are legally retained for a period of up to 3 years after your counselling is completed, after which time they are securely shredded. You can ask to read your counselling records at any time by putting your request in writing to the Manager and we will respond to this within 30 days. If another service asks for information about your counselling, we will ask for your permission in writing before sending it. You can see any report that we write before we send it and withdraw your permission at any time.

Privacy Information for Callers and Service Users (some of this may relate more to a helpline scenario so may not be relevant)

MyMy supports people in distress through its counselling service and also offers support groups and wellbeing activities.

The following information may be recorded when you call us to ask about our services:

• Phone number (if contact is by phone)
• Email address (if contact is by email)
• Postal address (if contact is by written letter)
• Caller ID
• Time & date of call
• Caller gender (if given)
• Caller age (if given)
• Contact type (i.e. by phone, letter, email, or face-to-face)
• Caller concerns

We also record some statistical information on each contact we receive, to report on and improve our service. This includes non-identifiable information, such as how distressed the individual was at the time of contact. This information is never used to report on specific people and cannot be used to identify anyone.

If you contact us by letter, the volunteer will be able to see your postal address if you have included that.

We try to keep as little information about you as possible. Volunteers may take notes when they talk to you to assist in the conversation. These notes are shredded at the end of the call. We don’t record your phone calls but volunteers and staff may from time to time listen in to calls for training, quality, support, or research purposes.

Where contact is electronic (for example by email), we keep copies of this contact for 30 days only, for the purpose of providing you with support. After this time the electronic copies are deleted and only the log of the contact is retained.

Safeguarding

When we are worried about your safety or that you are being hurt either by your own actions or by someone else, we want to help you find the best way to keep yourself safe.

We’ll do this by listening and by talking to you about what you want to do. Most of the time whatever you tell us will stay between you and MyMy. However, if we feel that you are unable to make decisions for yourself sometimes we might need to tell someone else what you’ve told us to be able to help you.

This will apply to all children (those under the age of 18). Under some circumstances it may also apply to adults, if for example, if you are an adult at risk (you have additional health or care needs which prevent you from protecting yourself)

If you share information with us which identified a child or adult as risk who is suffering abuse or harm, after discussion with you, we may contact other relevant services.

We can only do this if we have information which identifies you.

We take your confidentiality very seriously and will only consider speaking to someone else if we are really worried about what you have told us and we feel that you are unable to make decisions.

MyMy aims to provide support to the highest possible standard at all times. To help achieve this, we encourage anyone who is not completely happy with the service they have received to let us know immediately, by contacting us on 028 4327 7549.

When you contact us with a query or a complaint, we will collect personal information from you (including contact details and why you are calling). We use this information to provide you with advice and support, to find out the answer to your query, or to investigate your complaint (as appropriate), and also to create a record on our systems so that we have this available if you contact us again, and so we can follow up in relation to any outstanding issues.

Your information will not be passed on to anyone outside of MyMy. With your prior consent, the COE will contact you directly to try to resolve your complaint.

We believe that we have a legitimate interest in ensuring that any queries and complaints are quickly and appropriately dealt with.

MYMY Safeguarding Adults at Risk 2022

Privacy Information for Donors and Supporters

When you donate money to MyMy, we need to collect and use certain information about you in order to process your donation. This could include your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number, bank details, taxpayer status (to understand if we can claim Gift Aid), date of birth and history of previous donations. We may also ask your permission at this time to add you to our marketing database so that we can keep in touch.

When you make a donation via our website, your data is stored on a secure server and processed by our payment service providers. Our payment service providers use internationally recognised encryption standards and security methods to keep your data safe.

Privacy Information for Potential Volunteers and Volunteers

When we recruit volunteers we need to collect, use, store and share certain information about applicants and volunteers to manage their application and involvement with the organisation. When you contact us about volunteering opportunities, you will be asked to give us your personal details so that we can contact you in relation to your enquiry.

MYMY will keep the personal information you provide to us during the application process confidential, unless we are required to disclose it in connection with a police investigation and/or we have reason to believe that you may present a risk of harm to others.

If your application to volunteer is unsuccessful or is withdrawn, MYMY will …..(securely shred/delete after 6 months for example).

If your application is successful, in additional to personal contact details, MYMY will keep the following records:

• Criminal record checks for volunteers (what is applicable to NI here?)
• Branch directory which contains contact details for all volunteers holding key organisational roles
• Database of all volunteers

How MYMY Stores Your Personal Information

We use ‘cloud-based’ applications provided by external suppliers to collect, store and handle some types of personal information. These suppliers (e.g., Microsoft) may be based outside of the UK or the EEA. Where this is the case, we ask suppliers to provide evidence that they have the appropriate measures in place to ensure that your personal information is kept safe, and we have taken steps to protect that data which is subject to transfer outside the UK and the EEA.

We will always seek to ensure that appropriate or suitable safeguards are in place to protect your personal information and that storage of your personal information in in compliance with applicable data protection laws.

See also privacy information for counselling clients above.

Security safeguards

MYMY uses various technical and organisational measures to keep your data safe. Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information, using both physical and electronic means. Our staff and volunteers receive data protection training and are provided with guidance that they are required to follow when handling personal information.

Although we do our best to keep your information safe, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure, so please bear this in mind when you share information with us via our website.

How long we keep your personal information for:

We only keep your personal information for as long as required, depending on what it was collected for, and in accordance with legal requirements and tax and accounting rules.

Keeping your information up to date:

If your personal details have changed, let us know by contacting MYMY:

By post: 19, Dundrum Rd, Newcastle, Co. Down, BT33 0BG.

By email: hello@mymy.org.uk

By phone: 028 4372 7549