Your Privacy and Safety
At Youth Community Development Services we take the privacy and safety of our users very seriously. We have written this document to tell you:
about how we protect your personal data,
how we work to keep you safe.
What is Data Protection
There is a law called the Data Protection Law which is in place to ensure that we use your personal data lawfully, in order to protect it.
Youth Community Development Services is known as a data controller, our registered office is at 6 Templars Avenue, Golders Green, London, NW11 0PD (Telephone: 0203 984 9337, Email: admin@yc-dc.co.uk). We have a Data Protection Officer called Gary Baron, who is also our Chief Executive Officer and ensures that we follow the rules on data protection.
What information do we need to collect and why?
When you use Youth Community Development Services we need to collect some personal information from you – this is known as Personal Data.
When you sign up to Youth Community Development Services we ask for
Where you live (region and location only),
Your age and month of birth.
We need this data to be able to provide a service to you.
We also collect additional data, which is called ‘special category data’ including age, gender, ethnicity, religion. This information helps us to improve our services to you and the wider community.
Your gender identity
Your ethnicity
This data helps us to measure how we are performing as a service and to improve our service. This data is kept in-house and only provided to authorities upon request otherwise is not shared outside of any employees within the company.
By completing sign up and agreeing to this document you are giving us consent to collect this data – this is called our ‘Lawful basis for processing’.
What other personal data do we hold?
Depending on how you interact with us, you may at times give us some personal information which we have not asked for.
Any personal data which you provide to us will be stored against your profile within our website. If you do decide to give us your personal data, it may mean you are no longer ‘anonymous’ to us, for example, we may know who you are or where you are. We will always ask for your consent to be able to do this.
Do we share your personal data with anyone else?
Safeguarding
We have a Duty of Care to safeguard your wellbeing.
If we are really worried about you and think that you are at risk or danger, we will talk to you about the need for somebody outside the Youth Community Development Services team to know what has happened or what is happening to you.
We would only do this if:
your life is at risk because of something you are doing,
you are at risk from somebody else,
you are a risk to somebody else.
In these cases, our practitioners will ask you to consent to share your details so that they can refer you to the appropriate services or get the help you need. If you do not consent and our practitioner feels it is a safeguarding issue, then they may refer/share any details which we have.
We will always:
Seek your consent to pass over your details, although we will ‘act’ to protect you without your consent if you are aged under 18 or unable to give consent.
In this case, we will:
Let you know who we are passing details to and why,
Keep you informed of any actions we intend to take,
Where possible, we will work with you to agree every step taken.
Sometimes, if the situation is very serious, we may have to take action without talking to you first.
Referral from Youth Community Development Services to external services
Sometimes getting extra help for you can be really helpful. Depending on where you live you may be given the option of a referral to another service in your area. These services may be operated by Youth Community Development Services or a partner organisation.
If you choose to self-refer to one of these services through the Youth Community Development Services website or one of our advisors you may need to provide some personal data. This is to enable us to complete the referral and will be stored on the Youth Community Development Services system and is only accessible to the Youth Community Development Services Team and the organisation you are being referred to.
We will always seek your consent to pass over your details and let you know who we are passing details to.
Where do we keep your data and how long for?
All information is stored securely within Youth Community Development Services website and is only accessible to the Youth Community Development Services Team. Our systems are encrypted (coded which ensures your data is protected).
We only keep your personal data for as long as necessary to provide our services to you and also to ensure we meet our legal obligations. If you have had one-to-one chats with our Youth Community Development Services team we usually keep your personal data up until your 25th Birthday. In some cases we may need to keep it for longer, if we legally have to.
Your Data – Your Rights
As the owner (aka ‘Data Subject’) of your personal data, you have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) to find out about our use of your personal data.
You have:
The Right to be informed – by providing you with this document, we are giving you the information about your data that is collected and held by us,
The Right of access – you can ask about your personal data that we hold – this is called a “data subject access request”,
The Right to rectification – you can tell us if the data we hold is wrong or incomplete and ask us to put it right,
The Right to erasure – you can request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask* us to delete or stop processing your data. (*There may be times when we can’t do this though because we are required by law to hold it for a certain time),
The Right to restrict processing – you can object to the processing of your data where the Company is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing,
The Right to data portability – you can ask us to securely transfer your personal data to another data controller,
The Right to object – you can ask us to stop the processing of your personal data for a period of time if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
If you wish to do any of these things, message a member of the Youth Community Development Services team and they will help you.
If you think that we have failed to handle your data properly or have not allowed your rights listed above, you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Your right to withdraw your consent
You have the right to withdraw consent if you have shared any personal data with us. You can withdraw your consent to share information at any time. You can request to withdraw your consent by sending a message to the Youth Community Development Services team when you are logged in.
Additional Information on how we improve our services
We may use the data we collect to measure how we are performing as a service and to improve our service. We never use any of your personal data for these purposes without your consent.
Research
For Youth Community Development Services to be able to improve its services, we sometimes work with trusted partners, including universities and NHS organisations to help us analyse our data.
This includes working with researchers from universities who get ethical approval for their work.
The data which we provide to them is a mixture of statistics and information that you have provided to us.
The statistics include data such as the age, ethnicity, and gender of service users as well as other information provided to the service such as goals or assessments, and service usage data. Other information includes both public and private information shared within Youth Community Development Services. Public information refers to any article and discussion board submissions as well as comments which are approved by our moderation team and posted on the site for other users to see. Private information refers to any communication you have with the counselling team either through chat (one-to-one messaging) or messaging the team inbox.
It does not contain any personal data which could be used to identify you – it is completely anonymised. No identifiable information will ever be shared outside of our organisation for research purposes without your explicit consent.
If you want to find out more information about how we use data for research, you can message the team through the platform.
The use of cookies on Youth Community Development Services
Cookies help us to provide you with a good experience when you browse Youth Community Development Services and allow you to make full use of the features available to you.
We use cookies on this website for one purpose, and that is to collect statistical information about how you use Youth Community Development Services, so that we can improve the way the site works and measure our success. By recording such statistics as browser usage, service user location, operating system etc. we can measure and improve on how we manage and maintain our site, in order to give you an ultimately better service experience.