At FirstCare

FirstCare respects your right to privacy and is committed to safeguarding the privacy of our service users, care givers, and our website visitors. We adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information.

‘Personal Information’ in general terms means any information that can be used to identify someone personally. It includes information or an opinion, whether true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual who is identified or reasonably identifiable. Personal information does not include anonymous, aggregated or de-identified information.

‘Sensitive Information’ is a subset of personal information and is given a higher level of protection. Sensitive information is defined in the Privacy Act and includes information or opinion about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin; political opinion, membership of a political association; religious beliefs or affiliations; philosophical beliefs; membership of a professional or trade association; membership of a trade union; sexual preferences; or criminal records.

Collection of personal information

FirstCare will, from time to time, receive and store the personal information you enter onto our website, provided to us directly or given to us in other forms.

The type of information we collect will depend on the nature of your interaction with FirstCare; however, FirstCare may collect the following types of information:

  • Identification and contact details, such as name, mailing and street address, email address, telephone number, age or birth date.
  • ​Family type, country of birth, year of arrival in Australia, language spoken at home.
  • Financial information, such as housing, occupation, financial status and income
  • Sensitive information, such as racial or ethnic background, criminal history and health information, English proficiency, need for an interpret er or disability.
  • Other personal or sensitive information not covered above, which is collected as a result of providing a customer with a product or service.
  • Details of the support services a service user has requested or enquired about, or services provided, together with any additional information necessary to respond or deliver those services.
  • Any additional information relating to a service user that a service user or their caregiver provides in-person, by telephone, in writing or via email.
  • Information you provide to us through service user surveys or visits by representatives from time to time.

We may also collect some information that is not personal information because it does not identify you or anyone else. For example, we may collect anonymous answers to surveys or aggregated information about how users use our website.

How we collect your personal information

FirstCare collects personal information from you in a variety of ways, including when you interact with us electronically or in person, when you access our website and when we provide services to you. We may also receive personal information from third parties. If we do, we will protect it as set out in this Privacy Policy.

Notification of collection of personal information

When FirstCare collects personal information, or as soon as possible after collection, we will provide customers with a privacy notice (otherwise known as a collection notice) and refer service user to this Privacy Policy.

What happens if FirstCare can’t collect personal information

Due to the nature of the products and services provided by FirstCare, generally, it is not possible to provide services or anonymously deal with customers. For example, if a customer does not provide FirstCare with the personal information described above FirstCare may not be able to provide services to you, or to provide you with information about services.

For what purpose does FirstCare collect, hold, use and disclose personal information

FirstCare collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information for the following purposes:

  • To assess whether a service user is eligible for our services.
  • To provide a range of products and services to service users.
  • To contact you by a variety of measures – telephone, email, SMS or mail.
  • To answer enquiries and provide information about FirstCare products and services.
  • To recruit staff, contractors, students on placement and volunteers.
  • To update our records and keep service user contact information up to date.
  • For planning, quality control and the creation of anonymous case studies.
  • To update our data and records.
  • For use in monitoring and assessing FirstCare services, including as part of peer review of service and reporting to funding providers and stakeholders.
  • To provide updated personal information to our related contractors or service providers.
  • To process and respond to any complaints.
  • To comply with any law, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination.
  • To assess the performance of our website and to improve the operations of the website.
  • For the administrative, marketing (including direct marketing), planning, product or service development, quality control, and research purposes of FirstCare, its related bodies, contractors or service providers.

FirstCare may also collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for other purposes explained at the time of collection or which are required or authorised by or under the law for which the service user has provided their consent.

Service user’s personal information will not be shared, sold, rented or disclosed other than as described in this Privacy Policy.

Disclosure of your personal information

We may disclose your personal information to:

  • Any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisors, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy. Personal information is only supplied to a third party when it is required by law or for the delivery of our services.
  • Any organisation or person with the service user’s expressed permission/authority.
  • We may from time to time need to discuss personal information to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, in the course of a legal proceeding or response to a law enforcement agency request.

    We may also use your personal information to protect the copyright, trademarks, legal rights property or safety of FirstCare (https://firstcare.org.au), its service users or third parties.

    Information we collect may from time to time be stored, processes in or transferred between parties located in countries outside of Australia. These include, but are not limited to the USA or UK.
    If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, we reserve the right to transfer to the extent permissible at law our user databases, together with any personal information and non-personal information contained in those databases. This information may be disclosed to a potential purchaser under an agreement to maintain confidentiality.

    We would seek only to disclose information in good faith and where required by any of the above circumstances.

    By providing us with personal information, you consent to the terms of this Privacy Policy and the types of disclosures covered by this Policy. Where we disclose your personal information to third parties, we will request that the third party follow this Policy regarding handling your personal information.

    Direct marketing materials

    FirstCare may send customers direct marketing communications and information about our products and services that we consider may be of interest to our customers. These communications may be sent in various forms, including mail, SMS, email or telephone, by applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). Our customer’s preference for a method of communication will be used whenever practical to do so. Also, our customers, at any time, may opt-out of receiving marketing communication from us by contacting our Privacy Officer or by using opt-out facilities provided in the marketing communication.

    FirstCare may provide service user personal information to other organisations contracted to provide direct marketing on behalf of FirstCare. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure our contractors are compliant with our Privacy Policy before providing such data.

    Security of your personal information

    FirstCare is committed to ensuring that the information you provide us is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

    The transmission and exchange of information are carried out at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us or receive from us. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that the personal information that we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

    Access to your personal information

    You may request details of personal information that we hold about you by the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). A small administrative fee may be payable for the provision of information. If you would like a copy of the information which we hold about you or believe that any information we hold on you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please email our Privacy Officer at feedback@firstcare.org.au

    There may be instances where FirstCare cannot grant access to the personal information held. For example, FirstCare may need to refuse access if granting access would interfere with the privacy of others or if it would result in a breach of confidentiality. If this happens, FirstCare will provide written notice outlining the reasons for the decision and available complaint mechanisms.

    Website

    When you visit our website: When you visit our website (https://firstcare.org.au), we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, website visited immediately before coming to our site, etc. This information is used in an aggregated manner to analyse how people use our site, such that we can improve our services.

    Cookies:

    We may, from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Cookies are not malicious programs that access or damage your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website.

    Our website may from time to time use cookies to analyse website traffic and help us provide better website visitor experience. Also, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third-party services such as Google AdWords etc. These ads may appear on this website or other websites you visit.

    Third Party Sites:

    Our site may, from time to time, have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that FirstCare is not responsible for the privacy practices of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of every website that collects personal information.

    Changes to the privacy policy

    Please be aware that we may change this Privacy Policy in the future. We may modify this Policy at any time, in our sole discretion and all modification will be effective immediately upon our posting of the modifications on our website. Please check back from time to time to review our Privacy Policy.

    Complaints about privacy

    If you have any complaints or would like to provide feedback about our privacy practices, please feel free to send in details of your complaints to:
    FirstCare
    PO BOX 29, CAMPBELLTOWN NSW 2560
    Feedback: feedback@firstcare.org.au
    Complaints: complaints@firstcare.org.au

    We take complaints seriously and will respond to you very quickly after receiving written notice of your complaint or feedback.

    This Privacy Policy was last updated on 8th December 2022