Your Privacy
Cornwall Memory Cafe Network is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services. This Privacy Notice explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy in line with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact the memory cafe coordinator, Kirsty Dexter at , or by calling 01736 697459, or by writing to us at Cornwall Memory Cafe Network, Units 1G/H Guildford Road Industrial Estate, Hayle, TR27 4QZ.
Personal information
Why we use your personal information
Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when put together with other information can then identify a person. For example, this could be your name, contact details, or national insurance number.
Special categories of personal information
Some information is ‘special’ and needs more protection due to its sensitivity. Under GDPR, the categories of special personal information are:
- Race or ethnicity
- Political opinion
- Sexuality and sexual health
- Religious or philosophical beliefs
- Trade union membership
- Physical or mental health
- Sexual orientation and sexual life
- Criminal history
- Genetic/biometric data.
Why do we need your personal information?
We may need to use some information about you to:
- Deliver services and support to you (e.g. Signposting to Advice Services, putting you in contact with memory cafes and Wayfinders with your consent, Cornwall Memory Cafe Network membership, email newsletters)
- Train and manage the employment of our workers and volunteers who deliver those services
- Help investigate any worries or complaints you have about our services
- Keep track of how our services are being used
- Check the quality of services (internally and by external organisations)
- Help with research and planning of new services.
How the law allows us to use your personal information
We will only collect and use your personal information when we have at least one legal basis to do so, as defined by GDPR. These are:
- Consent
- Contractual obligation
- Legal obligation
- Vital interests (i.e. life-or-death situations)
- Public interest
- Legitimate interests.
We have a variety of services and users will be informed of the legal basis for processing personal information for a specific service when they first engage the service. This could be over the phone, face-to-face, via email, letter, or via further service specific policy notices.
Generally we collect and use personal information only where:
- You, or your legal representative, have given consent
- You have entered into a contract with us
- It is necessary to perform our statutory duties
- It is necessary to protect someone in an emergency
- It is required by law
- It is necessary for employment purposes
- You have made your information publicly available.
If consent is the only legal basis we have to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw consent it at any time and we will delete or anonymise your personal information. If you want to remove your consent, please email or call 01736 697459 and tell us which service you’re using so we can deal with your request.
We only use what we need
Generally, we’ll only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service or meet a requirement.
If we don’t need personal information we won’t ask you for it, or we won’t record it, or we’ll delete it or make it anonymous if we’ve already recorded it. For example in a survey we may not need your contact details and we’ll only collect your survey responses.
If we use your personal information for research and analysis, we’ll always keep you anonymous or use a different name unless you’ve agreed that your personal information can be used for that research.
We don’t sell your personal information to anyone else.
What you can do with your information
The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us.
You can ask for access to the information we hold on you
You have the right to ask for all the information we have about you and the services you receive from us. When we receive a request from you in writing, we must give you access to everything we’ve recorded about you. This will generally be free of charge, however we are a charity and have to make best use of staff time, therefore we may charge a reasonable fee if the request is excessive, unfounded or repetitive.
We will not be able to provide you with any parts of your record which contain:
- Confidential information about other people
- Data that a professional thinks will cause serious harm to you or someone else’s physical or mental wellbeing
- Information we think may stop us from preventing or detecting a crime.
This applies to personal information that is in both paper and electronic records. If you ask us, we’ll also let others see your record (except if one of the points above applies).
If you can’t request your records in writing, we’ll make sure there are other ways that you can. If you have any queries about access to your information please contact the memory cafe coordinator at , or call 01736 697459.
You can ask to change information you think is inaccurate
You should let us know if you disagree with something written on your file.
We may not always be able to change or remove that information but we’ll correct factual inaccuracies and may include your comments in the record to show that you disagree with it.
You can ask to delete information (your right to be forgotten)
In some circumstances you can ask for your personal information to be deleted, for example:
- Where your personal information is no longer needed for the reason it was collected in the first place
- Where you have removed your consent for us to use your information (where there is no other legal reason for us to use it)
- Where there is no legal reason for the use of your information
- Where deleting the information is a legal requirement.
In the rare circumstance where your personal information has been shared with others, we’ll do what we can to make sure those using your personal information comply with your request for erasure.
You have the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for any Cornwall Memory Cafe Network service. However, if this request is approved this may cause delays or prevent us from being able to provide our service to you.
Where possible we’ll seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or use your personal information because we are required to by law.
Who do we share your information with?
We use a range of organisations to either store personal information or help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements we take measures to satisfy ourselves that the organisations are reputable, trustworthy and comply with data protection law.
We very rarely share your personal information unless you have given us consent to do so.
There are some exceptional circumstances where we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations, or if we feel there’s a good reason that’s more important than protecting your privacy, including:
- If a court orders that we provide the information
- In order to prevent crime and fraud
- If there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to other professionals
- To protect a child or vulnerable adult.
If we’re worried about your physical safety or feel we need to take action to protect you from being harmed in other ways, we’ll discuss this with you and, if possible, get your permission to tell others about your situation before doing so.
If you do not give consent we may still share your information if we believe the risk to others is serious enough to do so.
There may also be rare occasions when the risk to others is so great that we need to share information straight away.
If this is the case, we’ll make sure that we record what information we share and our reasons for doing so. We’ll let you know what we’ve done and why, if we think it is safe to do so.
Individual memory cafes have their own policies and data collection that is separate from the Cornwall Memory Cafe Network.
How do we protect your information?
We’ll do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we’ll only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:
- Controlling access to systems and networks with passwords which are kept secure and changed regularly. This allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
- Storing paper documents securely in locked cupboards and destroying paper documents promptly when they are no longer needed
- Keeping data anonymous where appropriate or removing identifying personal information after a service has been delivered
- Training our staff and volunteers, and the use of detailed data protection policies and procedures. This allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
- Regular testing of our technology and ways of working, including keeping up to date on the latest security updates.
In the unlikely event that there is a data breach we have a procedure in place to inform the Information Commissioner’s Office and anyone whose personal information was mishandled. We will investigate any breaches or near misses immediately to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
How long do we keep your personal information?
There’s sometimes a legal reason to keep your personal information for a set period of time. Where there is not a specified time period for retention in law or in official government guidelines, we follow best practice guidelines and carefully consider an appropriate retention period for the personal information we hold.
To make our websites easier to use, we sometimes place small text files on your device (for example your iPad or laptop) called cookies. Most big websites do this too.
They improve things by:
- Remembering the things you’ve chosen while on our website, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
- Measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs.
By using our websites, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.
We don’t use cookies on our websites that collect information about what other websites you visit (often referred to as privacy intrusive cookies), other than if you clicked a link on another website to get to ours, then we may be able to see what referral website you came from. This helps us to see how people find out about us.
Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. You can manage and/or delete these files as you wish.
To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, you can visit www.aboutcookies.org
Turning off cookies
You can stop cookies being downloaded on to your computer or other device by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. If you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our websites.
There is more information about how to delete or stop using cookies on www.aboutcookies.org. You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.