Privacy, Complaints, and Security Policy

Privacy, Complaints, and Security Policy

PERSONAL DATA AND INFORMATION

The privacy of our clients is our utmost concern. We aim to protect ‘personal information’ defined as any information that is about an identifiable individual. We recognise personal information is sensitive and we are committed to maintaining privacy.

All professional services are provided adhering to The Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, and appropriate Board ethics such as the Board of Occupational Therapy Code of Ethics and World Association for Sexual Health. Professionals working at angelaroberts.nz have appropriate Board Registration to their Health Professions, current Annual Practicing Certificates, Post Graduate University Sexology certifications, Relationship Therapy training, members of their professional associations and associated Aotearoa/NZ and International professional bodies related to sexual health. They are Police vetted, and hold current Children Worker’s safety checks. They adhere to these requirements in conjunction with other relevant legislation, policies, procedures and standards defining professional practice and conduct.

Clients will not be discussed outside of the therapeutic relationship in any way that can identify them as individuals. Anyone working for angelaroberts.nz will adhere to the client confidentiality policy. Staff will only collect and use your information to administer, support, improve, and obtain feedback on our services, and to detect and prevent faults and breaches of our network security, and to fulfil the law, or our contract terms. Information from clients is not to be used for any other reasons. Therapists will utilise personal information in session solely for the therapeutic process.

All paperwork on clients is to be kept locked secured and destroyed according to accounting and legal requirements.  Except for legal requirements, anyone working for angelaroberts.nz will not pass on, sell, or rent your personal data to any third party. The only exceptions occur where the third parties are simply working on our behalf as our subcontractors or administrators (such as companies that process credit card payments and administer websites), our professional advisers, or if the data is required to be disclosed by law or to a regulator.

Any agreement between the therapist and client about confidentiality may be reviewed and changed by joint negotiation. 

All staff of angelaroberts.nz may use or disclose information without your consent or authorisation in the following circumstances:

Any breaches in privacy by angelaroberts.nz staff will result in instant repercussions for the individual’s continued employment or contracting with angelaroberts.nz.

1. RESPONSIBILITIES

1.a Angelaroberts.nz reserves the right at its sole discretion to terminate the provision of therapy at any time if ongoing treatment is considered inappropriate for any reason. You have the right to decline or terminate therapy sessions at any time.

1.b All Therapists responding to you via our Website(s) are fully qualified. Administrative staff will not be providing clinical or therapeutic advice.

1.c Angelaroberts.nz will use best endeavours to ensure that all advice, comments, information and therapy will be provided with appropriate skill, care and sensitivity. However, we cannot be held responsible for any actions or inaction by you directly or indirectly based on what we provided. 

1.d Though all reasonable care shall be taken to ensure that the text of sessions is kept confidential, and the website is protected as per our security policy angelaroberts.nz shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, or other damage resulting from third-party interception of online sessions.

1.e Angelaroberts.nz, its agents, contractors, and therapists will do their best to protect their computer systems from viruses and other potentially destructive programs.

2. FEEDBACK AND COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

2.a We welcome constructive feedback on our services and are always seeking improvement. If you have specific feedback regarding the website information, the booking system, or your interactions with the therapist, please make direct contact with us, either via writing or verbally.

2.b If you have a complaint regarding the conduct of the Therapist, you are welcome to discuss this with us directly in the first instance. Often complaints can be resolved by letting the Therapist know your concerns. Please contact us by email, putting ‘complaint’ in the subject box. Please provide as much information as possible. Your complaint will be accepted. You will then receive a formal written acknowledgement of your complaint. You may be contacted to discuss the matter, depending on the nature of your complaint. You will receive a written response within 4 weeks of the receipt of your complaint in writing. For effective management of your complaint, we recommend all complaints must be received within 6 months of them having arisen.

2.c If the matter is not settled to your satisfaction and you choose to appeal the complaint response, professional external mediation can be accessed within a further 4-week period of receiving the complaint written response. You must provide written notification of this to the Therapist and costs associated will need to be agreed upon before proceeding.

2.d If you feel the matter is beyond the reconciliation process internally and breaches the code of conduct you can follow the process of complaints via the appropriate registration boards. For example, please see Occupational Therapy Board Complaints or Concerns

2.e Please note we take matters of public defamation both in person and online/in the media based on religious or other agendas very seriously and will address these via litigation.

3. WEBSITE DATA AND INFORMATION

3.a Our website address is: https://angelaroberts.nz.

3.b When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

3.c If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

3.d If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

3.e Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

3.f If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

3.g If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

3.h If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

3.i Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.