How to support Guideposts

About Us > Our Responsibilities > Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

How we treat the information we gather

As an organisation Guideposts have access to and store personal information about service users, staff and volunteers.

All our services take a person-centred approach to assessment and planning and so ensure that people are at the heart of what is recorded about them.

We work with individuals to make sure they know what we have and how they can see it.

Who we are

Our vision is of a society where all people are valued and have equality of opportunity. Guideposts’ exists to provide services to meet individual needs so that each person has the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations and maximise their potential. We seek to achieve excellence in our work and lead the way in researching, delivering and disseminating good practice.

Put simply: we are Here for You and will continue to strive to be here for you and your family in more meaningful and personalised ways in the future.

Our supporters are important to us, and we are committed to keeping your data safe, making it clear what information we collect and how we use it.

This page, together with our terms and conditions and cookies policy sets out how we use and protect your data.

Guideposts is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller under number Z5312946. Our registered charity number is 272619, and a registered company limited by guarantee under number 1282361

You can change how we contact you at any time, simply by emailing info@guideposts.org.uk or calling us on 01993 893560

What data we collect and how we use it

The type and quantity of data we collect and use depends on why you have provided it. We will only collect, use and otherwise handle your personal data:

  • where you have consented to this for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
  • where this is necessary to fulfil legal obligations that apply to us
  • where it is necessary for our legitimate interests relating to running our daily operations, as long as, in each case, these interests are in line with applicable law and your legal rights and freedoms.

Supporters

If you support us, for example by donating, signing up to Gift Aid, or signing up to a campaign, we will usually collect your name, contact details, and whether you would like to be contacted, and how we would do so. If appropriate, we may also ask to collect your date of birth, financial details, Gift Aid eligibility, reasons for support, information relating to health and disability, and responses to our campaigns.

We collect this data so we can keep you up to date with information and products you have requested, or may be interested in, and to ask for more support, in the way that you have chosen; to run our events; and to fulfil our legal responsibilities for financial and Gift Aid reporting.

We will keep your data only for as long as necessary. If you have kindly donated to us, we are required to keep this data for seven years. If you have not donated to us, we will only keep your data for three years, unless you withdraw consent, in which case we will remove your details from our system upon request.

Volunteers

If you volunteer with us, or enquire about our volunteering opportunities, we will usually collect your name, contact details, emergency contact details, bank details, contact preferences, ethnicity, gender, availability to volunteer, disability (including physical and mental conditions) and criminal convictions.

We collect this data so that we can contact you about volunteering opportunities that come up; so that we ensure the safety of our volunteers, staff and people who use our services; so we can pay expenses; and to help us anonymously measure our inclusion and accessibility across our services.

We will keep this data for seven years after you stop volunteering for us.

Gift in Wills

Some of our supporters choose to let us know that they plan to leave a gift in their Will to Guideposts to help us carry out our important work.

We will collect contact details and contact preferences of supporters who ask us for more information about how to leave a gift in their Will or who tell us that they are thinking about leaving a gift to the charity. We will use this data to keep in touch and send you other information and products that you are interested in. If you change your mind then we will only keep this data for three years.

If you tell us that you do intend to leave us a gift in your Will then we will collect contact details and contact preferences. We will use this data to keep in touch and send you other information and products that you have expressed an interest in. This data will be kept on file long-term, as hopefully it will be many years before your gift is realised.

To administer bequests, solicitors and executors will provide us with details of the deceased, the corresponding executors, solicitors and where necessary other beneficiaries. This data will be kept by us and only shared for the purposes of executing the Will. The data will be kept on file indefinitely.

Case studies and stories

Some of our supporters kindly share stories about their experiences to help us in our campaigns. We will record the details of the story, and contact details to enable us to get updated approval to use the story.

We will keep this data for three years after you give it to us.

Photography

Our supporters, volunteers and people who use our services kindly let us use photography and images of them to help our campaigns and activity come to life. We keep these images stored in a secure location and will only use them with the subject’s permission.

We keep these images as long as you continue to access our services, work with us or support us, unless you ask otherwise. We will not usually use images for more than 3 years after the image is taken.

Research

Part of the work we do involves carrying out research. If you agree to take part, we will record responses to questions that you give us, and your personal details.

This data will be used to fulfil our research objectives, and may be shared for relevant projects. Your data will remain anonymous unless you consent to it being disclosed.

The data we collect will be kept for five years.

Helpline

We run a support and information helpline.

We record only the data needed to help your enquiry. This data is not shared in any way and will not be used to contact you about other services or offers from unless you give us permission to do so.

Services

Guideposts offer a wide range of support and information and advice services to people with long term health conditions; disabled people, their families and carers and other professionals. We will collect your contact details and preferences, and any other data that is relevant to delivering the service to you.

This information will only be used for the purposes of the service and not shared with the rest of Guideposts unless you give us permission to do so.

We will keep the data for up to seven years, in line with contracts and government regulations.

Tell Us Your Views: Compliments, Complaints and Concerns

Should you wish to register a complaint we will collect your name, contact details and details about the complaint to enable us to respond, monitor and improve our organisation.
This data will be shared with any parts of Guideposts or any third parties who are involved in resolving the complaint, for example, agencies that we have partnered with. We will hold this data for six years.

More information about our Tell Us Your Views Policy can be found here

Website

When someone visits guideposts.org.uk we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out information, such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site.

If we want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it. We will collect any questions, queries and feedback you leave. This will include your email address if you send us an email, your IP address, and which web browser (and version) you use. Information on how people use the site, through cookies and page tagging, helps us improve our website and our services.

We might also obtain your personal data through your use of social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, depending on your settings or the privacy policies of these social media and messaging services. To change your settings on these services, please refer to their privacy notices, which will tell you how to do this.

Blogs

Our blog is currently hosted on WordPress.com, which is run by Automattic Inc. By subscribing to the blog, your email and IP address will be collected so that you can be kept up to date with new blogs and to ensure that the house rules are adhered to. For more information about how WordPress processes data, please see Automattic’s privacy notice

Comments left on our blog are kept indefinitely.

Sharing your data

Unless we are required to share your data for legal or regulatory reasons, to help with a complaint, or to administer a Gift in Will, we will never share your data with other organisations.

We do use third-party organisations to help us collect donations such as JustGiving and Virgin Money Giving, and to help us fulfil our marketing. Where we use external companies to collect or process data on our behalf, we carry out comprehensive checks on these companies, and put in place contracts to control how they manage the data they may collect or have access to.

Keeping your data safe and up to date

At Guideposts we ensure that the most appropriate technical controls are in place to keep your data safely. Access to your data is regularly reviewed and only accessible to the relevant trained staff, volunteers and contractors.

Where we use external companies to collect or process data on our behalf, we carry out comprehensive checks, and put in place contracts to control how they manage the data they may collect or have access to.

Your data will be hosted on servers located in the UK, which will not be transferred out of the European Union, or in the case of our blog, the data will be stored in the US.

Your rights

We will only collect the data that we need to carry out the purposes you have contacted us for, or given us permission to use it for.

To enable us to carry out the purposes you have contacted us for, there will be occasions when we will make some data collection mandatory i.e. your name and address to claim gift aid, or your email address to access our services. If you don’t provide this data, we cannot carry out the purposes you have contacted us for.

We will always tell you why these fields are mandatory.

At any time that you wish you can:

  1. gain access to your personal information,
  2. object to the processing of your personal information,
  3. object to the use of automated decision-making and profiling,
  4. restrict the processing of your personal information,
  5. ask for a copy of your personal data (known as data portability),
  6. rectify or correct your personal information, and
  7. have your personal information removed (known as Erasure or the ‘right to be forgotten’).

Where you have provided consent to be contacted or to receive a service, you will be entitled to withdraw that consent at any time.

If you are at any point unhappy with the way that we handled your personal data, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

To make changes to how we contact you, please contact info@guideposts.org.uk

For all other requests please contact the CEO at:

Guideposts Trust,
Two Rivers,
Station Lane,
Witney,
OX28 4BH.

Changes to this Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any changes in the way we use your personal information we will make this clear on the website.

If you use Guideposts services and would like more information you can speak to the people who are providing the service you use, or for more information download our leaflets from here:

Join the Guideposts community 

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to hear how you can help us support people with learning disabilities, dementia, or complex mental health problems, and make a real difference to their lives:

You have successfully subscribed to the newsletter

Too many subscribe attempts for this email address.

/ ( DD/MM )
Would like to hear about
Information about Guideposts' work
Events
Fundraising Challenges
Volunteering
Job Opportunities
Supporting Guideposts