Personal data is another way to describe information about you, our Residents, our Colleagues and other people we interact with at HC-One. It covers any information that is about you which allows you to be identified. Personal data covers simple information such as your name, email address, and phone number, but it also covers more detailed information such as reference numbers, your location, and other identifiers used by computers.

To find out more about how HC-One uses your personal information please click on the sections below.

Most of the personal information we collect about you, will come from you and your family when you come to live with us, or when your family is choosing a care home. When your family come to visit you, they will need to give us some information, so we know they are visiting our homes.
 
As we get to know more about you, we will collect more information about you so that the kind care we provide, is as person-centred as possible. We will also obtain information from your GP and other health professionals relating to your health.
 
By law, we must keep certain personal information so that Inspectors and other third-party organisations can see that we provide you with kind, person-centred care.

HC-One may collect these kinds of personal information about you:

•    Basic information, such as name, address, date of birth, phone number and email.
•    Financial information, such has how your care is paid for, and any past payments you have will have made.
•    Information about you and your family, such as your next of kin, your partner or spouse, your children and how to get in touch with them.
•    Information about your preferences and interests, such as hobbies, likes and dislikes, routines, and habits.
•    Visual images, such as copies of identification and photographs of you.
•    Details of any services you have received from us in the past.
•    Information we receive from other sources, such as government departments and your doctor or other healthcare professionals.
•    Dates and times of visits your family have made to you.
•    Letters we have sent to you or your family about you.
 

Collecting sensitive information about you
 
HC-One may also need to collect some information about you which is particularly sensitive. This type of information is called special category personal data. The law says we can only collect and use this kind of information for very specific legal reasons, such as providing your care and helping other organisations with their functions, such safeguarding. HC-One will only collect and use this information where it is essential for our work.

Types of special category personal data that HC-One may collect and use:

•    Information about your health that is used to provide you with appropriate care and treatment when living in our care homes.
•    Information about your views and beliefs.
•    Information about your cultural identity.
•    Information about your relationships.
•    Information that is about who you are.
 

 
Collecting information from other people
 
Sometimes, HC-One may need to collect your data from other people. These will include:

•    Government departments.
•    National regulators.
•    The National Health Service (NHS), your doctor and healthcare providers.
•    Organisations responsible for funding and organising care.
•    The Emergency services.
•    HC-One suppliers and local services.
 

As your care provider, HC-One must use personal information to deliver kind, person-centred care to you. The information will form part of your care plan, which will sometimes be held on a computer. People will only be allowed to access your information when they are involved in your care, they are managing care for HC-One, or they have other legitimate reasons to do so.

Your personal information can be used for any of the following purposes:

•    Providing and managing your account.
•    Supplying our services to you. Your personal details are needed for us to enter a contract with you.
•    Providing you with kind care that is person-centred and appropriate to your needs.
•    Disclosing information to an appropriate regulator to inform them of certain incidents as required under the law.;
•    Communicating with you. This may include responding to emails or telephone calls from you.
•    Disclosing information to a Coroner, the Police or Safeguarding where they need to conduct a formal investigation.
•    Supplying you with information about our services by email AND/OR post.
 

Legal reasons for obtaining and using your personal information

 HC-One must have a legal reason to collect and use your information. We will use different reasons, depending upon its purpose. This will be explained to you when, or as soon as possible after, we collect your information, or when it is given to us by someone else. The reasons we use are:

•    To fulfil the contract to provide you with care.
•    For HC-One to comply with the law and other regulatory requirements.
•    To protect your life in an emergency.
•    To act in the public interest.
•    To fulfil HC-One's accepted interests; or,
•    Where we have your consent to use your information.

 
Where HC-One must use information that is particularly sensitive, HC-One must have additional legal reasons to collect and use your information. These are:

•    To provide you with kind, person-centred care.
•    To protect the wider health of everyone, including you.
•    To protect your life when you cannot give permission.
•    To act in a significant public interest, such as safeguarding.
•    To allow fairness in legal matters.
•    Where we have explicit consent to use your information.
 

On occasions, HC-One may be asked to give your personal information or need to collect it from other organisations. These can include:

•    Government departments;
•    National regulators
•    The National Health Service (NHS), your doctor and healthcare providers
•    Organisations responsible for funding and organising care
•    The emergency services
•    HC-One suppliers and local services such as funeral directors.

Any companies we employ who use your personal information are responsible to you through legal agreements with HC-One around Data Protection.

Click [here] to see the organisations we work with along with links to the Privacy Statements of some of these organisations.

HC-One will only seek consent/permission to collect, use and share your personal information where you have freedom of choice about how your information is used, such as when we send certain information about our services, or where we would like to use your images on our website, social media or promotional materials.
 
Where you do not have such freedom over how your information is used, we will use a different legal reason to collect, use and store your information.
 
If you choose not to provide us with your information, this can make it difficult for us to provide you or your relative with kind, person-centred care, that meets your/their needs.

Service Updates
 
Occasionally, HC-One may need to contact you to provide updates about things relating to our homes. These can include:

•    Any events and meetings which take place at the home
•    Any updates on the care provided to your relative
•    Any outbreaks/illness which may affect your ability to visit us, and
•    Any legally mandated information which we must provide to you.

It is not possible to opt out from receiving these updates as they are essential to the provision of kind care.
 
Feedback and Surveys
 
HC-One regularly sends out requests for feedback to our residents and relatives to continually evaluate and improve the kind care that we offer. HC-One are under a legal obligation to seek such views; therefore, we do not need your prior consent to send out our surveys and feedback requests.
 
If you decide that you do not wish to receive any future surveys, you can opt out by writing to:
 
Communications and Marketing
HC-One
Southgate House
Archer Street
Darlington
DL3 6AH
 
Direct Marketing
 
From time to time, HC-One may wish to contact you about the services we can offer to you and your relatives.
 
As this is classed as direct marketing, we will ask you opt-in to this when you or your relative moves into one of our homes. If you choose not to receive such communications, we will not contact you regarding this.
 
Should you have chosen to receive such communications, and no longer wish to receive them, you can write to:
 
Communications and Marketing
HC-One
Southgate House
Archer Street
Darlington
DL3 6AH
 
Sharing Your Contact Details with Third Party Organisations
 
HC-One will only use your contact details for our own purposes. We will never share or sell your personal information to any third parties for marketing purposes.
 
We will never share any details with third party organisations unless we are legally required to, where sharing is with public bodies to fulfil their statutory functions, or where we have your consent.
 
We will usually try to inform you prior to sharing unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, or it will cause an excessive burden on HC-One’s resources.

We will normally only share your personal information with your knowledge and where it is needed and when we have a legal reason. Most sharing will be with other professionals and agencies involved with your direct care and treatment, such as a General Practitioner.
 
If you do not want other organisations that are not involved with your direct care to see your personal information, please tell your Home Manager. We can then record your wishes and third parties will look to respect your wishes where they can.
 
Please remember that occasionally, HC-One will be required to share certain personal information with a third party by law. For example, we are required by law to tell the care regulators if you suffer an injury. We will always look to provide this information in a way that reduces any risks to your privacy, but this is not always possible.
 
In England, HC-One do not utilise the National Data Opt Out scheme. This scheme is where you have expressed a preference to NHS Digital for your data not to be shared for certain research and planning activities.
 
Further information about your specific data protection rights can be found in the Your Rights Under Data Protection section.

Where possible, most information relating to a person’s care is stored within the UK only. These will be in hardcopy, or electronic systems.
 
However, in some cases, our suppliers may store your personal information outside of the UK. More details on the companies we use can be found in the “Organisations We Work With” section.

Personal information that we are no longer using is kept securely only for as long as it is needed, or is required by law, before being safely destroyed.
 
The duration for which your personal information is kept will depend on our reason for collecting it and is defined in HC-One’s “Records Retention and Destruction Schedule Procedure”, which is available on our website.

Keeping your personal information secure is an important principle of Data Protection, and we take the following steps to protect your information which includes:

•    Necessary measures to ensure personal information is protected
•    All electronic data transferred through our systems is encrypted
•    Information is not used for any purpose other than as agreed upon in our terms and conditions
•    Protect your data from loss.

Our systems are checked and audited regularly by experts to ensure they meet all privacy standards, are protected through strong passwords and encryption and comply with our general data protection security and protection policies.

HC-One uses CCTV in some of its care homes in order to provide reassurance to the Residents and their Relatives, protect homes from unlawful intrusion and assist whistleblowers who may have raised concerns. Cameras are only  used in communal areas, other than in exceptional circumstances. All HC-One homes using CCTV will:

•    Consult with everyone living in our homes and their Relatives prior to installation;
•    Have considered the impacts and risks of CCTV, which will have been agreed by the Data Protection Officer;
•    Have appropriate signs informing all who enter that CCTV is in use in the home;
•    Have appropriate security of the CCTV equipment, including encryption to prevent unlawful access to any footage

If you have concerns about the use of CCTV, please speak to the Home Manager in the first instance.

HC-One sometimes uses social media to keep Relatives, who aren’t always able to visit, up to date with what is going on in our homes. We will never use photographs of Residents, their families or our staff without seeking permission to do so.
 
Twitter - www.twitter.com/hc_one
Facebook - www.facebook.com/HCOneKindcare/
LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/company/hc-one/

If you need to contact us about anything relating to your personal information, or would like to be provided with a copy, you can speak to us by:
 
Writing to us:                   The Data Protection Officer 
                                               HC-One
                                               Southgate House 
                                               Archer Street 
                                               Darlington
                                               DL3 6AH
Emailing us:                      [email protected]
 
HC-One must by law have a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who ensures that
HC-One only uses your data according to the law. Our DPO is Russell Wynn and our deputy DPO is Sylvia Blakeley. Should you need to contact them, please use the details above.
 
We may change this Privacy Statement from time to time. This may be necessary, for example, if the law changes, or if we change our business in a way that affects how we protect your information.
 
Any changes will be made available on the General Privacy Statement page on our website.

If you have any concerns about the way in which we are using your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the details above, and we will endeavour to address your concern.
 
However, you do also have the right to complain about how we treat your personal information to the Information Commissioner’s Office - www.ico.org.uk (“ICO”).
 
Information Commissioners Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
 
[email protected]
 
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Fax: 01625 524510
 

Personal data is another way to describe personal information. It is any information that is about you that allows you to be identified. Personal data covers simple information such as your name, email and phone number, but it also covers more detailed information such as reference numbers, your location, and other identifiers used by computers.
 
To find out more about how HC-One uses your personal information please click on the sections below.

The majority of personal information we collect about you, will come from you visit our homes.
 
Depending on your ongoing interactions with us we may collect more information about you, for instance if you are providing regular maintenance or inspecting our homes.
 
By law, we have to keep certain personal information so that we know who has visited our home and when, but also the purpose of your visit.
 
HC-One may collect these kinds of personal information about you:
 

• Basic information, such as name, address, phone number, and email;

• Employment information, such as who you are employed by and your role;

• Emergency Contact Information about your family or employer, so we know who to contact in an emergency;

• Visual images, such as copies of identification or CCTV footage of you in our homes;

• Information we receive from other sources, such as your employer, other agencies or legal representative;

• Letters and emails, we have sent to you about your interactions with HC-One;

• Dates and times of your visits to our premises.

 
Collecting sensitive information about you
 
Whilst it would be uncommon to collect sensitive information about you, HC-One may sometimes need to collect some information which is particularly sensitive. This type of information is called special category personal data. The law says we can only collect and use this kind of information for very specific legal reasons, such as keeping you, our Residents and Colleagues safe when you are on our premises and helping other organisations with their functions, such safeguarding. HC-One will only collect and use this information where it is essential for our work.
 
Types of special category personal data that HC-One may collect and use:
 

• Information about pre-existing health conditions which could affect your visit;

• Information if you suffered an accident when on our premises;

• Information that we need in order to keep our Residents safe.

 
Collecting information from other people
 
Sometimes, HC-One may need to collect your data from other people. These will include:
 

• Your employer

• Government departments;

• National regulators;

• Your Doctor;

• The Emergency services; or

• HC-One suppliers and local services.

We need to use personal information to ensure we are delivering kind, person-centred care to our residents, which includes keeping them safe. The information we use will sometimes be held on a computer. People will only be allowed to access your information when they are involved in your visit, such as Home and Area Managers.
 
Your personal information can be used for any of the following purposes:
 

• Knowing when you visited our premises;

• Disclosing information to an appropriate regulator to inform them of certain incidents as required under the law;

• Communicating with you. This may include responding to emails or calls from you;

• Disclosing information to your employer should your behaviour fail to meet acceptable standards

• Disclosing information to a Coroner, the Police or Safeguarding where they need to conduct a formal investigation;

• Helping to keep you, your Colleagues and our Residents safe.

 
Legal reasons for obtaining and using your personal information
 
HC-One must have a legal reason to collect and use your information. We will use different reasons, depending upon its purpose. This must be explained to you when, or as soon as possible after, we collect your information, or when it is given to us by someone else. The reasons we use are:
 

• In order for HC-One to comply with our legal obligations with regards to health and safety;

• In order to protect your life in an emergency;

• In order to act in the public interest;

• In order to fulfil HC-One's accepted interests; or,

• Where we have your permission to use your information.

 
Where HC-One must use information that is particularly sensitive, HC-One must have additional legal reasons to collect and use your information. These are:
 

• In order to protect the health and safety of everyone, including you;

• In order to protect your life when you cannot give permission;

• In order to act in a significant public interest, such as safeguarding;

• In order to allow fairness in legal matters;

• We have explicit consent to use your information.