Privacy
This page explains how Self Care Connect (SCC) uses any information you give to us, and the ways in which we protect your privacy.
The Data Protection Act
Under the Data Protection Act, we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. We will only use your information for the purpose we have described and we do not pass on your details to any third party or government department unless you give us permission to do so. We use leading technologies to safeguard your data, and keep strict security standards to prevent any unauthorised access to it.
Comments and questions
If you send an email or log a query on the website asking for information, we may need to contact other government departments to find that information. If your question is technical, we may need to pass it to our IT team. We do not pass on any of your personal information when dealing with your enquiry, unless you have given us permission to do so.
When you post comments or questions, these can be read by anyone visiting the page. Your user name may appear next to your comments. We reserve the right to remove or edit material posted on the site.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user’s computer for record-keeping purposes. We make limited use of cookies on this site. We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies.
We use session cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site. A session ID cookie expires when you close you browser.
A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for up to 1 year. The only uses we make of persistent cookies are (a) when you select the ‘remember me’ option to avoid the need to submit login details repeatedly, and (b) when you increase the size of the text displayed on the site. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser’s "help" file.
You can set your computer not to accept cookies. If you do that, you may still use our site, but there may be some minor limitations on your ability to use some parts of it.
Registration
You are not required to register in order to use the SCC website. However, registration does provide extra facilities – such as ability to use the online events booking system, opportunity to receive email newsletters and alerts, and the ability to be notified of new content on the site.
During registration, you will be asked to provide your name, job title, organisation, email address, and a password. We use this information for the following purposes:
(1) to personalise the information available to you, e.g. providing access for eligible users to restricted discussion forums.
(2) to maintain an up-to-date database of contacts for Self Care Connect.
(3) to allow extra administrative facilities (such as editing page content) to authorised users.
Information in your registration profile can also be used within the online events booking system. In that case, you may be asked to supplement your profile with further contact details (address, telephone number, and fax number) and details of any special dietary or other requirements that you wish to tell us about. Your booking history is recorded against your profile.
The information in your online profile (name, job title, email address, organisation, and contact details) would never be shared outside the ‘NHS family’ without your express prior approval.
Within SCC your information may be used as described earlier in this statement – for maintenance of our contacts database, for communicating with colleagues, and for administration of events. Occasionally, we might share contact data with other teams in the ‘NHS family’ where this supports our work.
Your contact details would never be released outside the ‘NHS family’ without your explicit prior consent.
Log files
Log files allow us to record visitors' use of the site. They enable us to make changes to the layout of the site and to the information in it, based on the way that visitors move around it. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, and date/time stamp.
We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.
We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information.
Data storage, access, and IT security
All the information described above is held in an online database. SCC takes all reasonable steps to protect this data.
Physical access to the computer holding the online database is restricted to authorised 3rd-party engineers for maintenance purposes. The computer is located in a secure data centre with 24/7 controlled access.
Remote access to the database is controlled by password and is restricted to authorised personnel of SCC's contracted website maintainers – Kent House Consulting Ltd.
Controlled access to the information held in the database is available to authorised SCC personnel in order to assist with support to users, production and distribution of email newsletters, operation of the discussion forums, and maintenance of the database of contacts.
Passwords for users’ accounts are one-way encrypted in the database. They therefore cannot practically be recovered by any user, authorised or otherwise.
SCC has a contractual arrangement to ensure that security of the web, email, and database servers is continually maintained up-to-date. All security updates released for web server, email and databases software and operating system are applied promptly.
What happens when I link to another site?
The SCC site contains links to other websites, both those of government departments and of other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our site, so you should always be aware when you are moving to another site and read the privacy statement of any site which collects personal information.
Changes to this privacy policy
If this privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing this page ensures you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we will share it with other parties.
Contacting us
Here are the contact details if you wish to discuss any aspect of our management of your personal information:
Email: support.selfcare@eppcic.co.uk
Last updated: 12 June 08