Data Protection & Privacy
WHO WE ARE
Everybody Talks NZ (John Doleman) delivers independent speech and language therapy to children and adults in the clinic, home and/or educational setting.
We deliver Speech and Language Therapy Provision to people who contact us and self-refer to us for support.
It is owned and directed by John Doleman, Speech and Language Therapist, who is registered with the New Zealand Speech-Language Therapy Association and the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
John Doleman operates a website at www.everybodytalks.co.uk and www.everybodytalks.co.nz
Everybody Talks Ltd is committed to protecting the privacy of information provided by clients.
All client details, case notes and correspondence are stored securely and treated confidentially according to the Privacy Act 2020, the Health Information Privacy Code, 2020.
Personal Information about our clients, Case Notes, Reports and Therapy Programmes are stored on our secure electronic clinical recording system. We password protect reports before sending them to our clients.
We do not keep paper based confidential information.
Any sensitive personal details we store shall only be used for the purposes of delivering appropriate speech and language therapy services to you or your child.
Children, families and adults we provide care and support for:
Our role requires us to take clinical notes and collect background information about the people we support. This ensures best practice care is achieved for our clients.
We must collect health information directly from the you, not from other people.
Further, we can’t collect information in ways that are unfair or that intrude beyond reasonable necessity into your personal affairs. For example, health information will never be collected in a waiting room, or somewhere where other people might overhear.
We keep notes and documents about the children and adults we support for 10 years after our support has ended, in line with the Health (Retention of Information) Regulations 1996
Use of recordings (audio/ visual):
Some assessment and therapy techniques involve the use of audio or visual recordings to observe your child playing/ interacting with you or their important adult support workers.
Notes will be made based on the session and the therapist who has worked with your child will sometimes rely on playback of the recording to assist with accurate note taking.
Recordings may be temporarily stored. Once the recording has been used as needed in therapy and for note taking purposes (no more than 72 hours after the session) it will be deleted. No copies of these recordings are retained.
Electronic communication:
Email is not a 100% secure method of communication.
With your Consent, it will be used for correspondence and to send letters, reports and other documents.
Reports and target documents are password protected and saved in non-editable format.
Correspondence via email to yourself, school staff and other professionals involved with your child’s care will refer to your child by their initials only.
Sharing Information
We do not share your health information to anyone else except in the following circumstances:
- Where a specific law requires us to release your information (for example, if there’s a risk to someone’s safety);
- Where it’s necessary to avoid an immediate and/ or serious to you or someone else, and if it isn’t possible to get your consent. In this case, we will only give the information to people who can do something about the threat.
- If we are discussing your care professionally with other medical/ health professionals as appropriate (in this case, the other professionals must keep the information confidential and we will seek your consent to discuss your information with these other professionals)
We do not give or sell client details to any third parties.
Your rights to see your files
You have the right to see the medical records that we keep about you at any time and to get a copy of these records. We can only refuse access to your records in limited situations such as:
- if the information held also involves information about someone else, and releasing the information to you would be an unjustified breach of the other person’s privacy, or
- if giving the information would be likely to endanger any person’s safety.
You will not be charged for access to your files should you wish to see them unless you’ve asked for the same files more than once in 12 months.
