Disclaimer
- "Diabetes Counselling Online Inc " and its representatives take no responsibility for any advice given on the discussion forum from other members;
- Contact between people via the email buddy service; discussion forums and online chat rooms is their own responsibility and Diabetes Counselling Online Inc takes no responsibility for the communication between people, or actions of others in these areas of the website;
- Any person under the age of 14 requesting personal counselling will be asked for contact details for parental input where appropriate and attempts made to involve the parents where possible and it is our discretion whether to proceed or not;
- For protection and safety, any person under the age of 16 requesting an email buddy will be asked to provide their NDSS registration number so we can confirm their date of birth before deciding to proceed;
- Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility whatsoever for any information found on other websites accessed via the links and resources page;
- Please be aware that this is a social work/psychological counselling service, for Australian residents, operating under Australian law only;
- Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibilty for providing services to any overseas visitors;
- Medical advice is not provided - you should always consult your doctor in the first instance in the case of medical problems;
- Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility for any medical advice sought or given by any other member or source located via any area of the website.
Privacy policy and what happens to your information
Diabetes Counselling Online Inc is a not for profit charitable organisation primarily funded under the National Diabetes Service Scheme (NDSS), an initiative of the Commonwealth Government and administered by Diabetes Australia. Helen Edwards is the Director and Public Officer. A number of part time counsellors are also contracted to deliver services.
As a Commonwealth Government funded service, we are required to keep proper written records of the services, processes and research undertaken to complete the services. We are also required to collect your NDSS registration number for personal counselling and for anyone under 16 years requesting an email buddy.
It is a requirement of our contract with Diabetes Australia that we will use personal information only for the purposes of providing the service and we must take all reasonable measures to ensure personal information is protected against loss, or unauthorised access under the provision of the Privacy Act 1988.
This remains the case even if the contract were to end.
Part of what this service does requires the collection of personal information, for research, evaluation, ongoing funding and development. In doing so we are committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy will help you understand how Diabetes Counselling Online Inc collects, uses and safeguards your personal information.
This privacy policy is based on the Australian Privacy Commissioner's National Principles for the Fair Handling of Personal Information. http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html
If you have comments or questions regarding this privacy statement, please contact support@diabetescounselling.com.au
What happens to your information?
All emails sent to the service from the wesbite forms, or directly, are received by Helen Edwards at her home office computer at support@diabetescounselling.com.au
Counselling is then provided by Helen Edwards and/or the 2 other contracted counsellors. These counsellors are the only people who will see the information, unless you provide permission to share this with another person for supervision or education purposes.
If your case is to be handled by one of the part time counsellors, you will be advised that this is to occur. Helen will then introduce you to your counsellor and refer your email form onto them to begin working with you. The counsellor will also keep a hard copy of your conversations in secure storage for ongoing work, statistics and records. They will only share this information with Helen Edwards.
Storage of personal information
We need to keep hard copies of all emails as "case notes" for our private, professional use in ongoing counselling and for counting statistics for forwarding to the funding body, Diabetes Australia. These are shared between Helen Edwards and the other part time counsellors from time to time. No personal details are sent to Diabetes Australia, only numbers of people, types of problems, location and other statistical information. Legally we are required to keep these "case note" documents for 7 years. They are stored in a locked filing cabinet in each counsellors home office at all times and there is no public access. This is the case for all counselling notes.
Personal information
Diabetes Counselling Online Inc will never use your private details without first consulting you. We might use parts of a person's story with no identifying information for research, writing articles for journals, or presentation to health professionals. We might also need to discuss aperson's situation with a supervisor or a colleague. However we would never use any identifying information in such discussions without first asking you and in fact in most instances would ask for your permission prior to even discussing your story with someone else.
We would never share personal details or email addresses with a third party without the request of the person, such as in the email buddies programme, where email addresses need to be shared.
How much information do you need to share?
It is always up to you how much personal information you provide to the service, but we will need at least an email address in order to reply to you. Other identifying information might be needed such as a telephone number if we are going to chat on the phone. The more you can tell us about yourself and the problems the better. We can discuss this if you are not comfortable sharing such information.
Home addresses are often not necessary, but the region in which you live is helpful for us in situating you in your environment and linking you with other services. We are also required to collect state locations to forward to Diabetes Australia to enable furture funding requests. It is also helpful for usto see where people are coming from in terms of research and evaluation.
Email addresses or mailing addresses which you provide to Diabetes Counselling Online Inc are never, under any circumstance, provided to another organisation, group, company or individual, or used for any purpose other than that by which you provided your details to us originally.
Discussion Forum, Chat Rooms and Stories Page
Information, such as your email address and name, which you directly post onto the Discussion Forumis publicly accessible and cannot be removed by you once published, so please consider your own wishes around disclosure carefully before posting personal details. You can modify and delete your own posts.
The forum moderators are able to delete your details and your posts and you can approach us via personal message or email at support@diabetescounselling.com.au if you have a significant concern about your personal information or something which you have posted and all reasonable attempts will be made to remove the information.
Information you share in the Chat Room is at your own discretion and will usually occur without our involvement. You should always be careful about what you share in the Chat Room in terms of identifying information. Please follow the rules of the chat rooms.
The "Your Stories" page is a public area. We recommend not adding identifying details on your story and we will never publish a person's identifying details with their story on that page, unless they specifically request this.
Access to personal information and data quality
Wherever possible, we can provide you with access to the personal information that we may hold about you. In most cases it will be exactly the same as you have, as most contacts are via email and you can print out hard copies. If you have not done this and wish to see record of our conversations you can call us on 08 8365 4424 or email support@diabetescounselling.com.au and we can send that on to you via ordinary or "snail" mail.
We will take all reasonable steps to keep all information we hold up-to-date. If you identify that the information that we hold about you is incorrect, please contact us and request an amendment.
If you require clarification of this privacy policy or practices at any time please contact support@diabetescounselling.com.au or
call 08 8365 4424
