Privacy Policy
Privacy Statement
Achieve Support Queensland (Disability Support Services QLD) is committed to protecting privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act (1988) (Cth) (Act), the Australian Privacy Principles and all other applicable Queensland privacy legislation (Privacy Laws).
This policy statement outlines how Achieve Support collects, uses, discloses and stores personal information consistent with its legal obligations.
Application
This policy applies to all Achieve Support, employees/workers, volunteers, contractors and students on vocational placement.
Policy principles
This policy is based on the following legislation and principles:
The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth);
The Australian Privacy Principles;
The Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld);
The Achieve Support Values all staff, volunteers and contractors take personal responsibility for their work; and
Relational Care at our practices with respect to personal information are client centred, to protect information, support service delivery and enable informed choice and engagement.
Policy position
What is personal information
Personal information is information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:
(a) Whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
(b) Whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
Personal information also includes:
Sensitive information which is information about a person’s:
Racial or ethnic origin;
Political opinions;
Religious beliefs or affiliations;
Philosophical beliefs;
Membership of a political, professional or trade association or trade union;
Sexual orientation or practices;
Criminal record;
Health information;
Genetic information or
Biometric information
Health information which is information or opinion about:
the physical or mental health or a disability of a person;
a person’s expressed wishes about the future provision of health services to that person;
a health service provided or to be provided to a person;
as well as other personal information collected to provide a person with a health service.
The handling of employee’s personal information by Achieve Support is exempt from the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) if it is directly related to:
your current or former employment with us, and
an employee record held by us.
Employee records are managed in accordance with Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth).
How and why we collect personal information
Personal information is collected in various ways including interviews, appointments, forms, questionnaires, photographs, visual and voice recordings.
We will only collect information that is reasonably necessary to perform one or more of our functions or activities and collect sensitive information with the consent of the individual unless a lawful exception applies. Examples of functions and activities that we collect personal information for include:
to enable us to assess clients and potential clients for Achieve Support services;
to enable us to provide community care and community service programs;
to support participation in research trials;
to enable us to assess applications from prospective employees and volunteers;
to comply with legislative requirements and contractual obligations with government and their agencies;
for administration purposes such as audit, quality improvement and processing of accounts and insurance claims;
marketing and fundraising.
What information do we collect
We collect a range of personal information about individuals including names, contact details, next of kin, health information, tax file numbers and other government identifiers such as Medicare, Centrelink and Department of Veteran’s Affairs numbers, employment history, education background, socio-demographic and other information about suitability for duties.
How we hold personal information
Personal information will be stored in compliance with the Privacy Laws to protect the information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
We will take all reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information in accordance with Privacy Laws, contractual obligations and our document retention and destruction policies.
Disclosure and use of personal information
Achieve Support will collect, use, hold and disclose personal information to:
assess suitability for and deliver Achieve Support personalized services, determine fees for services, process accounts and payments;
conduct service specific research and quality activities; and
refer to another service provider where requested or authorized by law.
At the time of admission and collection, permission will be sought from each individual or their legal representative for any proposed use and disclosure of personal information.
For example Achieve Support:
assess and manage recruitment processes for potential employees and volunteers; and advises if a contractor is required to deliver a particular service, and that personal information must be provided to the contractor in order to deliver that service;
seeks permission on each occasion to take and use photographic (clinical or social) images.
Achieve Support also discloses personal information to a third party where an individual has provided clear authority for that third party to obtain information unless legally permitted to do so for example if we believe that the use or disclosure is necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any individual or the public.
Access to personal information
A person can access personal information that we hold about them, subject to any applicable exceptions under the Privacy Law which includes where:
it is unlawful to do so;
it would have an unreasonable impact upon the privacy of others;
it would pose a serious threat to life or health;
other grounds relating to anticipated legal proceedings, suspected unlawful activity or serious misconduct.
We may impose a reasonable charge for giving access to requested personal information.
We will take all reasonable steps to correct personal information to ensure that, having regard to the purpose for which it is held, it is accurate, up to date, complete, relevant and not misleading.
Security of personal information
We take all reasonable steps to protect personal information stored from loss, misuse and from un-authorized access, modification or disclosure.
Our protection of personal information includes:
limiting physical or electronic access to record storage;
a consent process to limit the disclosure of personal information;
entering into confidentiality agreements with employees, contractors and third party organizations that may have access to personal information;
having in place business continuity and recovery plans;
maintaining technology security products; and
destroying or de-identifying personal information when it is no longer required by law or our record retention policies;
Providing staff with information and training about Achieve Support’s privacy policy and practices with respect to the safety of personal information.
Overseas recipients
We will not disclose personal information unless we inform you of the overseas disclosure and obtain your consent or where we reasonably believe that the overseas recipient is subject to arrangements substantially similar to Australian privacy laws.
If we obtain your consent to post your personal information on a third party social media site, that personal information will be made public. Each social media site has its own set of terms and conditions as well as its own privacy policy.
Complaints
If you believe Achieve Support has not protected the privacy of your personal information you can lodge a complaint with the Executive Director of Achieve Support by writing/emailing to:
The Executive Director
Achieve Support Queensland
PO Box 342 Redbank Ipswich
Queensland 4301 Australia
Email: info@achievesupport.com.au
Policy custodian
The Director Governance, Risk & Assurance is responsible for ensuring this Policy is developed, reviewed and updated in order to meet strategic, operational, legal and quality requirements. This Policy is reviewed on an annual basis or as required.
Commonwealth Legislation
Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)
Australian Privacy Principles
Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth)
Aged Care Act 1997 (Cth)
Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)
State Legislation
Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld)
Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld)
Disability Services Act 2006 (Qld)
Evidence Act 1977 (Qld)
Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld)
For requests to access or correct personal information or to request a copy of our privacy policy, please contact:
Privacy Officer
Achieve Support Queensland
PO Box 342 Redbank Ipswich
Queensland 4301 Australia
Email: info@achievesupport.com.au
Our website address is: https://reliefwakes.com.au.
Comments
: When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
: If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
: If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
: Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Who we share your data with
: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
How long we retain your data
: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
: If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
