Privacy Policy

The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare – Carer Kafe

Our Service

The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare (ABN 24 629 376 672) (‘we’,‘us’ or ‘our’)is dedicated to ensuring children, young people and families are safe, happy and connected, with access to support when they need it.

We develop, influence and advocate for public policies that advance the rights and wellbeing of children, young people and families and address the social, economic and cultural barriers to improving their lives.

We partner with families, national and international organisations to ensure children, young people and families have access to education and remain connected to family, community and culture. We do this through various programs, including Carer Kafe which provides learning and development opportunities to statutory kinship carers, accredited foster carers and permanent carers across Victoria. (‘Program’).

The Program is supported by funding provided by the Australian Government and the goals of the Program are that:

Home-based carers across Victoria have access to learning and development opportunities that cater to their diverse needs and care experiences.
Victoria’s diverse home-based carers feel included, valued, connected, supported, and empowered.
Service delivery is informed by sector agencies, peak bodies and home-based carers.
Learning and development content is evidence based and responds to the dynamic and varied needs of children in care.

Privacy Policy– Scope and Purpose

This Privacy Policy will provide detailed information on when and why we collect your personal and sensitive information, how we use and manage it once collected, the limited circumstances under which we may disclose it to others, how we keep it secure and to outline our complaints handling process.

We are committed to the Australian Privacy Principles (“APPs”) as articulated in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (‘Privacy Act’).We consider by the implementation and compliance with these principles that we can create an open and transparent structure for the management of your personal and sensitive information.We are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy. We are committed to keeping secure the personal information that you provide to us to enable us to provide our services.We take our obligations to protect your personal information seriously.

Our Privacy Policy applies to all and any personal and sensitive information which we collect hold or use; whether, for example, you are:

a home based carer;
a family member of a carer
prospective carer
an agency staff member
a person within an education or training organisation with whom we deal; or
a visitor to our website.

By providing any personal and sensitive information to us, you indicate that you accept the methods that we use to handle, use, store, manage and disclose your personal and sensitive information, the terms of this Privacy Policy, and the manner in which we comply with the APPs.

About this Privacy Policy

The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to tell you how we collect, use and manage your personal and sensitive information and to outline our complaints handling process. This will include an explanation of:

the kind of personal and sensitive information that we collect and hold about you;
how we collect your personal and sensitive information;
how we hold your personal and sensitive information;
the purposes for collecting, holding, using and disclosing your personal and sensitive information;
how you may access your personal or sensitive information held by us and correct that information whenit is incorrect;
how you may make a complaint about the way we collect, hold, use or disclose personal and sensitive information, and how we will deal withprivacy related complaints; and
whether we hold your personal and sensitive information with overseas service providers and the countries where such providers are located.

We only collect information necessary to deliver services to you

You have the option ofinteracting with us anonymously, or if you wish, by using a pseudonym, where practicable, which in our experience occurs typically if the interaction is general in nature. If the interaction is more specific, then we may need to identify you, to ensure we can respond, or interact, with you efficiently, properly or more completely.

If you do not provide us with certain personal and sensitive information, we may be unable to perform our functions and/or provide you with the services and support your request.

The kinds of personal and sensitive information that we collect and hold

When used in this Privacy Policy, ‘personal information’ has the meaning given in the Privacy Act. Generally, it means information or an opinion, whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

The type of personal information we collect and hold may vary depending on the nature of our interactions with you or our relationship with you.

The information we collect and hold can include:

your name, date of birth, country of birth and gender;
your contact information such as your address, email address, phone number;
your photo identification, which may include your Driver’s License
any disabilities you have, impairment or long-term conditions;
country of birth, citizenship, residency status, refugee and asylum status, language/s spoken;
identification as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin;
home based carer type
your preferred means of communication;
information that will help us support you under the Program; and/or
information that will help us to understand how helpful the Program is for you and the value of the Program generally.

We may also collect sensitive information from you to determine your eligibility under the Program and to help us measure and improve our inclusion of culturally diverse carers and carers of culturally diverse children and of carers with intersecting identities and carers of children with intersecting identities. Sensitive information is defined by the Privacy Act to be certain kinds of personal information. Examples of sensitive information that we may collect from you through providing information and other services to you include:

race or ethnic origin;
sexual orientation or practices;
criminal record
health or genetic information;
some aspects of biometric information (including photographs and voice or video recordings of you); and/or
your next of kin or designated emergency contacts.

Sensitive information is subject to stricter controls. We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent. If we receive any sensitive information about you, we will handle it in accordance with this Privacy Policy, the Privacy Act and the APPs.

Use of your personal and sensitive information– why do we collect, hold, use and disclose personal and sensitive information?

By collecting your personal and sensitive information, we are able to:

interact with you;
verify your identity;
respond to your requests or inquiries;
provide you with information and resources about the Program
provide you with appropriate assistance that may be available to you under the Program;
contact you about your participation in the Program;
provide access to training, online resources, webinars, retreats and conferences, tools, information and news and collaboration;
promote our services and the Program;
provide and manage the delivery of the Program to support you;
to evaluate and monitor the Program more generally;
inform you of available learning and development opportunities and support services
offer you specific, personalised and relevant learning and development opportunities
liaise with related entities and third-party service providers for the provision of the foregoing services to you and of facilities, such as data processing and storage, to allow us to effectively offer you our services;
prepare and deliver documents to you as required for the administration of our services and the Program;
comply with the requirements of funding bodies as part of a funding agreement with us;
comply with our statutory, legislative, legal or contractual obligations;
undertake research for analytical, training, and analytical purposes in relation to the Program. This helps us to improve our understanding of customer needs, create marketing profiles, support strategic development, ensure we are complying with the regulatory and legal framework in which we operate and to enable us to conduct research we may share your information with third parties.
allow you to obtain access to the interactive elements of our website;
tailor our services to your needs;
respond to critical incidents;
manage our events, business operations and future activities;
keep internal records and adhering to reporting requirements;
directly market educational, career and other opportunities to you, including through means of online marketing, telemarketing and email marketing;
maintain our business relationship with you and offer our services on an on-going basis;
involve you in activities or other initiatives undertaken by us;
respond to your questions about the Program;
resolve any complaints relating to the Program; and/or
conduct surveys about the Program.

We only collect personal and sensitive information that is reasonably necessary for one or more of our functions or activities. This includes different functions and activities we conduct as part of the Program.

You accept when you provide personal information through this website to us that we will collect your personal information for these functions and activities.

Consent

In most cases we will require you to specifically consent to any collection, use or disclosure of your personal information to us. This is done by either accepting the terms of service on-line and assenting to this Privacy Policy or requesting you to sign a Privacy Collection Notice and Consent to Release form. Sometimes your consent may be implied through your conduct with us.

In all cases you agree that provision by you to us of personal information, including sensitive information, constitutes consent to our collecting, storing, using and disclosing that information for the purposes outlined above and, in the ways outlined in this policy.

Rest assured that no matter how your personal or sensitive information is collected, it will be dealt with in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the Australian Privacy Principles.

How we collect and hold your personal information

We will collect personal information directly from you as we interact with you from time to time when:

you complete an application or registration form (whether electronic, online or hard copy);
you correspond with us by contacting us, requesting information or making an enquiry via our website, our social media, by phone, email or mail;
you meet with us in person;
you register for our services, or an event or webinar;
you participate in the Program;
we record the details of and/or take a scan/photocopy of your photo identification;
you participate in a survey;
you submit personal information via our website or social media channels (for example, Facebook, or YouTube
someone requests our services on your behalf; and/or
you are a participant of the Program.

You may be a current user, or someone we have interacted with in the past, or may interact with again in the future.

It may be supplied in writing by you in the form of applications and details submitted by you in hard copy or electronically, either directly to us, or in some circumstances to a third party.

In limited circumstances, where it is unreasonable or impracticable to collect personal information from you directly, we may collect your personal information from a third party. The type of third party who might provide information to us will vary depending on the nature of the interaction with you. It may be that a family member, support service provider, or information service provider, provides us with your personal information on your behalf or with your consent in to provide our service. It is our preference to collect personal information from you directly and we will endeavour to do so. Where this occurs, we will take all reasonable steps to inform you of that.

Protection from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access or modification

We understand the importance of protecting the personal information we hold about you. Given this, we are focused on protecting your personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access or modification by:

securing all personal information;
limiting access to personal information to those that need access; and
protecting our systems with appropriate technology solutions.

We take our obligation to protect your personal information we hold on your behalf seriously. We take reasonable steps to ensure the security of all information we collect, including that the information is protected from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. For example, your personal information is maintained in a secure environment, which can be accessed only by authorised personnel. However, no data transmission over the internet or information stored on servers accessible through the internet can be guaranteed to be fully secure.

Holding your personal information

We are committed to ensuring your information is safe and secure.

We have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to reasonably secure any information collected from you from misuse, interference or loss and in order to prevent unauthorised access to, modification or disclosure of that information.

Some of the ways we do this include:

confidentiality requirements for our employees, contractors, volunteers;
locked cabinets or in secure, access-controlled premises;
hard copy document storage and security practices;
providing a discrete environment for confidential interviews;
security measures for access to computer systems to protect personal information from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, loss, misuse or interference
firewall protection for our systems; and/or
password protected data storage devices such as laptops, tablets and smart phones.

Tracking information on this website

For statistical purposes, we collect information on website activity such as the number of users who visit our website, the date and time of visits, the number of pages viewed, navigation patterns, what country and what systems users have used to access the site and, when entering one of our websites from another website, the address of that website. This information is obtained through the use of ‘cookies’ as a reporting mechanism.

A ‘cookie’ is a packet of information that allows a website to identify and interact more effectively with a computer. Cookies do not identify you, although they do identify your browser type and Internet Service Provider.

Your browser can be individually set to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify when a cookie is sent. If cookies are rejected, there may be limits on how our website can be used. To evaluate the effectiveness of our website, we may use third parties to collect statistical data. No personal data is collected on these occasions.

Cookies identify traffic coming into and out of the website. Cookies enable our web server to collect information back from your browser each time you visit our website.

Cookies do not identify individual users. When you visit our website, our servers may record information about your usage, the time of your visit, its duration, the pages you visit and style settings. To this extent, you provide us with consent to de-identify such information by the use of cookies for this purpose. We do not collect information which can identify individuals who visit the site. Rather, when you visit our website, Google Analytics compiles data that records and logs your visit with the following information collected for strictly statistical purposes only:

the user’s server address;
the user’s top level domain name;
the date and time of the visit to the site;
the pages accessed and documents downloaded;
the search words and referral sites used; and
the type of browser used.

Access to, and use of, this information is restricted to us. No attempt will be made by us to track or identify individual users or their browsing activities, except in the unlikely event of an investigation, where a law enforcement agency may execute a warrant to inspect Google Analytics logs.

We will only use statistics obtained from cookies to ascertain and follow website usage to enable improvements, updates and maintenance of pages on the website.

In addition, we use social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube. Any content or information you disclose on these sites may be viewed, collected and used by other users. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or data collection methods used by these sites. Please refer to each platform’s privacy statements.

Who we may disclose personal information

We will use our best efforts to ensure that the information you provide to us remains private and is used only for the purpose for which it was collected and of which you were notified.

We may, however, disclose the personal information we collect about you to our related entities and/or certain affiliated third party service providers for the purposes outlined above, during and after your participation in the Program.

This may include disclosure to:

our volunteers, employees and related bodies corporate;
training providers, CSOs and ACCOs
community and government agencies, Victorian State and Territory government departments and agencies;
regulatory authorities, as required or authorised by law;
our professional advisors (e.g., accountants, auditors, and lawyers);
contractors or external service providers used by us in relation to the Program and for our general operations (including IT service providers);
law enforcement agencies, including (but not limited to) the Australian Federal Police and State and Territory law enforcement agencies;
researchers or others working directly with us in connection to our services or the delivery of the Program;
any other person, agency or organisation which may be able to contribute to information relevant to your suitability to participate in the Program;
your nominated next of kin; and/or
third party service providers that you have directly authorised to receive your personal information.

If we need to disclose your personal information to a third party you will be asked to sign a Privacy Collection Notice and Consent to Release. Only relevant information will be released.

From time to time, we share personal information with our researcher collaborators and partners, as defined in the arrangement we have with funding received from the Australian Government. As discussed above, we are also required to provide de-identified data to the Australian Government in accordance with the arrangements we have with the Australian Government.

We may also disclose personal information to businesses which provide services to us from time to time. We require these businesses to comply with strict confidentiality requirements and the APPs.

Destroying or de-identifying personal information

We will take whatever steps are reasonable in the circumstances to destroy information or ensure that the information is de-identified once its use by us has been completed, and that the destruction is in compliance with Australian law for record retention.

Cross border disclosures

We do not disclose any personal information to any overseas recipient, other than training providers for courses you have registered for, nor store any such customer data offshore.

For other general purposes, when we use third party cloud-based technology for activities such as surveys, website analytics and campaign management, basic personal information may be stored in cloud servers not located in Australia. We will take reasonable steps to ascertain that the third party is bound by law or a binding scheme that has the effect of protecting the information in a substantially similar way in which the APPs protect the information.

Contacting you and direct marketing

We are a not-for-profit organisation that performs services for the benefit of the community and we may, from time to time, use or disclose personal information for the purpose of direct marketing. The products and services may be offered by us or our related bodies corporate.

We may contact you in a variety of ways, including by post, email, SMS or telephone call or any other electronic means.

From time to time, we may send you information about our services (direct marketing) or survey you on a range of issues to identify and analyse the ongoing needs of our stakeholders and the quality of our services and interactions with you.

We do not use your personal information for the purpose of direct marketing of products or services that are unrelated to the services for which you have engaged with us.

Any commercial electronic message that we send will identify us as the sender and will include our contact details. The message will also provide an unsubscribe facility. If you do not wish to receive commercial electronic messages from us, please let us know. Our contact details are also provided at the end of this policy.

If personal information is sensitive, we will not use or disclose the information for direct marketing without your consent.

Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme

The Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) Scheme applies where your personal information held by us has been inadvertently lost or disclosed or improperly accessed and that loss, disclosure or access may result in serious harm to you.

We have in place processes to investigate suspected breaches, mitigate any harm and report in accordance with the requirements.

How you may access your personal information held by us

You are entitled to access the information we hold about you. If it is a simple request, we invite you to contact us by email info@carerkafe.org.au

We will respond to you within 20 working daysfrom the date of the request. We will also seek to provide you with access to the information in the manner that you have requested if it is reasonable and practicable to do so.

If we cannot provide you with access to the personal information we hold, then we will advise you via return email. Examples of reasons we may refuse a request for access include, where providing the information:

may pose a threat to the health or safety of an individual or the public;
may have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of another individual;
is not allowed by law; or
may reveal internal information relating to a sensitive decision-making process.

If you do not agree with the reasons that we have given to deny access to your information, then you may lodge a complaint in accordance with the mechanism referred to below.

Correcting information where it is incorrect

We want the personal information we hold to be correct and accurate. If information we hold about you is in corrector inaccurate, we would like to know so that we can promptly correct it.

We encourage you to contact us if the information we hold is in corrector inaccurate. In certain situations, we may not agree to a request to correct information we hold about you. If this occurs, we will advise you of this and our reason for not agreeingto the correction request.To request that your personal information be corrected, please contact us via email info@carerkafe.org.au

Updating your personal information

If you believe any of the personal information we hold about you is not complete or current, we will take reasonable steps to update the information or delete it. To request for your personal information be updated or deleted, please contact us via email info@carerkafe.org.au

How you may make a complaint about the way we handle, use and manage personal information, and how we will deal with privacy related complaints

If you wish to make a complaint about our handling, use or management of personal information, you should provide the details of the complaint to us by:

Mail:
The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
Level 5, 50 Market Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia
Attention: Privacy Officer

Telephone: (+61)3 9614 1577
Email: info@carerkafe.org.au

We ask that you provide as much information as possible about your complaint so that we can understand and respond to it, including:

what happened, when and how it came to your attention; and
refer to specific breaches of one or more of the Australian Privacy Principles; and
outline the outcome you seek.

We will contact you within 20 working days to advise you of our response to your complaint. We will work with the appropriate regulatory authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding your personal information that we cannot resolve with you directly.

If the complaint is not resolved, it may be referred to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (the ‘OAIC’). The contact details for the OAIC are:

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 2999
Canberra ACT 2601, Australia

Telephone: 1300 363 992
Fax: 02 9284 9666
Website: www.oaic.gov.au

Inquiries or comments

We welcome any inquiry or comment in relation to the practice, procedures or systems that we have in place to protect your personal information. Please contact us if you wish to discuss any such matters via email info@carerkafe.org.au

Links to other websites

Our website may also contain links to other websites. While these links are provided for convenience, if you are navigating to these sites please be aware that the information handling practices of the linked websites may differ from ours. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not unable to guarantee the privacy practices of other websites.

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this website linking to other websites. Those sites are not governed by this Privacy Policy. If you have questions about how a site uses your information, you will need to check that site’s privacy statement.

Website Security

Whenever personal information is sent via our website, we use high security levels to protect it. The security level of a webpage can be viewed by clicking on the internet browser’s padlock or key icon.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This policy will be kept up to date and published on this website.We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page.

Your continued use of our website, requesting or continued use of our services or the provision of your further personal information after this Privacy Policy has been revised will be your deemed acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.

This policy is effective from 28 February 2024.

Contact Details

The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
Mail: c/o Carer Kafe
Attention: Privacy Officer

Email: info@carerkafe.org.au
Phone: (03) 9614 1577
Address: Level 5, 50 Market Street
Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia