1. Who We Are
Authentic Community Services ("ACS", "we", "us", "our") provides home care services across Northern Ireland. We are committed to protecting your personal data and respecting your privacy in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, please contact us at kon@acsni.org.
2. What Data We Collect
We collect and process the following types of personal data:
- Contact information (name, email address, phone number, postal address) when you book a consultation or submit a contact form on our website
- Career application data (name, email address, phone number, area of availability, experience, and working availability) when you apply to join our team through our careers page
- Care records and visit notes for clients receiving our home care services, managed through our secure Care Hub portal
- Website usage data via cookies (see Cookie Policy below)
3. Why We Collect It
We use your personal data for the following purposes:
- To respond to your enquiries and arrange consultations
- To process carer applications and manage recruitment
- To deliver, coordinate, and manage home care services
- To improve our website and the services we provide
4. Legal Basis (UK GDPR)
We process your personal data under the following lawful bases:
- Consent: When you submit a contact form, career application, or accept cookies on our website, you provide your consent for us to process the data you supply.
- Legitimate interest: We have a legitimate interest in delivering our care services effectively and in improving our website and operations.
- Contractual necessity: Where we provide care services to you, processing your data is necessary for the performance of that contract.
5. How We Store & Protect Data
We take the security of your data seriously:
- Personal data is stored securely using Airtable, a cloud-based database platform, with encryption in transit and at rest.
- Our Care Hub portal uses authenticated access with encrypted tokens to ensure that only authorised personnel can access care records.
- We do not sell or share your personal data with third parties for marketing purposes.
- Access to personal data is restricted to staff who need it to perform their duties.
6. Data Retention
We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary:
- Enquiry and consultation data: retained for 2 years from the date of your last contact with us
- Career applications: retained for 1 year, or until the position has been filled, whichever is longer
- Care records: retained for 8 years, as required by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) Northern Ireland regulations
- Cookie data: see the Cookie Policy section below
7. Your Rights
Under UK GDPR, you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:
- Right of access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- Right to rectification — ask us to correct any inaccurate or incomplete data
- Right to erasure — request that we delete your personal data where there is no compelling reason for us to continue processing it
- Right to restrict processing — ask us to limit how we use your data
- Right to data portability — request your data in a structured, commonly used format
- Right to object — object to our processing of your personal data
- Right to withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at kon@acsni.org. We will respond to your request within one month.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe your data protection rights have been breached. Visit ico.org.uk for more information.
8. Third-Party Services
We use the following third-party services to operate our website and deliver our services:
- Airtable — cloud-based database used to store and manage enquiry, application, and care data
- Cloudflare — website hosting and content delivery
- Stripe — payment processing, where applicable
Each of these providers has their own privacy policies and data processing agreements in place. We only share data with them to the extent necessary to provide our services.
9. Children
Our home care services are designed for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under the age of 16. If you believe we have inadvertently collected data from a child, please contact us at kon@acsni.org and we will promptly delete it.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. When we make changes, we will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.
Cookie Policy
What Are Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently and to provide information to website owners. Cookies can be "session" cookies (which are deleted when you close your browser) or "persistent" cookies (which remain on your device for a set period).
Cookies We Use
We keep our use of cookies to the minimum necessary:
- Essential cookies: Our Care Hub portal uses authentication tokens stored as cookies to keep carers securely logged in during their session. These cookies are strictly necessary for the portal to function and cannot be switched off.
- No advertising or tracking cookies: We do not use any cookies for advertising, remarketing, or behavioural tracking purposes.
- No third-party analytics cookies: We do not use Google Analytics or any similar third-party analytics services that track individual users.
Managing Cookies
You can control and manage cookies through your browser settings. Most browsers allow you to:
- View what cookies are stored and delete them individually
- Block third-party cookies
- Block cookies from specific websites
- Block all cookies
- Delete all cookies when you close your browser
Please note that if you disable essential cookies, certain features of the Care Hub portal may not function correctly. Disabling cookies will not affect your ability to browse the main ACS website.
Contact
If you have any questions about our use of cookies or this policy, please contact us at kon@acsni.org.