Healing Family Therapy Practice

Privacy Policy

Healing Family Therapy Practice is committed to providing quality service and respecting your rights. Your right to privacy and confidentiality will be recognized, respected, and protected in all aspects of your contact with us. This statement outlines our ongoing obligations to you in respect to how we manage your Personal Information

Healing Family Therapy Practice complies with the requirement of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) as well as Code of conduct for Certain Health Care Worker (Community Service Complaint Regulation 2019)

What is Personal Information and why do we collect it?

Personal information is information or an opinion that identifies as individual. Personal information includes Health information, which is information about the physical or mental health or disability of an individual.

For example, of Personal information, we collect includes: names, phone number, email- address, residential addresses, date of birth, religious affiliation and emergency contact.

We collect your Personal information in many ways including: intake form, interviews, correspondence, by telephone, by email, via our website, from other publicly available sources and from third parties where applicable and with consent. Healing Family Therapy Practice will only request and retain Personal Information that is necessary to the service we are providing.

When we collect Personal Information, we will explain to you why we are collecting the information and how we plan to use it.

Third parties

When reasonable and practicable to do so, we will collect your Personal Information only from you. However, in some circumstances we may be provided with information by third parties (such as other health services). In such cases we will take reasonable steps to ensure that you are made aware of the information provided to us by the third party.

Privacy and our website

Our website is hosted on an Australian based server to comply with Australian data storage standards. The security of your personal information to us, but no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Cookies

To improve your experience on our site, we may use “cookies”. A Cookie is a small text file that our site may place on your computer as a tool to remember your preferences. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites, and these websites are not subject to our privacy policy. We are not responsible for the content of these websites or the privacy practices of these sites. If you navigate to other websites via our website, we advise you to read their privacy policy.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Your Personal Information will only be disclosed:

·         To prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the life or health of you and another person;

·         To outside agencies with your or your representative’s permission;

·         With written consent from a person with lawful authority; or

·         When required by law, or to fulfil legislative obligations such as mandatory reporting and court subpoena.

Security and Destruction of Personal Information

Your Personal and Health Information will be stored in a manner that reasonably protects it from misuse and loss and from unauthorized access, modification or disclosure.

When your Personal and Health Information is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was obtained, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify it.

Access to your Personal Information

You may access the Personal or Health Information we hold about you, including to update or correct it, subject to certain exceptions. If you wish to access your Personal or Health Information, please speak to us.

In order to protect your Personal or Health Information we may require identification from you before releasing the requested information.

You have the right to:

·         Request access to personal information we hold about you.

·         Access this information, and

·         Make corrections if you consider the information is not accurate, complete or up to date.

However, access may be denied in part or in total where:

·         The request is frivolous or vexatious;

·         Providing access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individual;

·         Providing access would be likely to prejudice an investigation of possible unlawful activity;

·         Providing access would pose a serious and imminent threat to the life or health of any individual; and

·         Denying access is required or authorized by or under law

We aim to address all requests to access or correct information within 14 days. We will not charge any fee for your access request but may charge an administrative fee for providing a copy of your information.

Maintaining the Quality of your Personal Information

It is important to us that your information is up to date. We will take al reasonable steps to make sure that your Personal Information is accurate and complete. If you find that the information we have is not up to date or is inaccurate, please advise us as soon as practicable so we can update our records and ensure we can continue to provide quality services to you.