Privacy Policy

At CARAS we take protecting your data seriously and are committed to being transparent about how we collect, use and store your data. This policy is intended to cover your privacy when you engage with us online or make an enquiry. Please see our Data Management Policy if you want to know more about how we keep your data if you access our services or apply to work or volunteer at CARAS.

If you have any queries about this statement please contact us at 25 Blakenham Road, London SW17 8NE or email us at info@caras.org.uk. If you wish to change the information we hold about you, or change how we communicate with you, please contact us at the same address.

We will collect personal information from you when you enquire about our activities, register with us, make a donation to us, or otherwise freely provide us with personal information. We may also receive information about you from other people, if a friend or colleague refers you to an activity.

The information we collect includes (but is not limited to):

• Title
• Name
• Address
• Email address
• Phone number
• Bank card information when making a donation
• Bank account details when setting up a direct debit
• Contact consent i.e. whether you’ve said you’d like to receive our newsletter

In general, we collect information from you when you:

• make a donation to support our work
• sign up to support our work by fundraising for us, including via Third Party sites such as JustGiving, where you give your consent for your information to be shared
  with us
• sign a petition or take part in a similar campaign action to support us
• sign up to receive our emails
• apply for a staff or volunteer opportunity with us
• register to attend an event, training course or workshop with us
• are referred to in an enquiry by a friend, carer or member of the public

We also collect anonymised statistical information about how our website, social media and email updates are being used. This information helps us improve the services and information we offer you, by providing us with insights into what content, activities and communications styles are most popular or relevant to our supporters.

‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by a web server to a web browser, which enable the server to collect information from the browser. Essentially it takes the form of a small text file deposited on your computer’s hard drive. We use cookies to ensure that you can interact with our websites successfully, to identify you when you visit our website and to keep track of your browsing patterns. The use of cookies does not give us access to the rest of your computer or to personal information about you. We use Google Analytics, and the analytical tools of our Social Media accounts (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram) to process information from cookies.

Under data protection law, certain categories of personal information are recognised as sensitive, including health information and information regarding race, religious beliefs, and political opinions (‘sensitive personal data’). We only collect this data where it is necessary to the provision of a service or facilitates us to support you with specific needs. Outside of our services we would only collect this data about you where you have freely shared such information in the course of donating to CARAS or otherwise engaging with us. In such cases, we may use this information to tailor our communications to you.

Sensitive personal data about donors, supporters or those making an enquiry of us is held securely in our emails and only accessed by relevant staff and volunteers as relevant to their role and the exercise of their duties.

We collect personal data to allow us to process:

• donations (including processing Gift Aid, where people have elected to contribute Gift Aid)
• campaign actions that involve communicating with Government and other relevant policy positions
• information about fundraising events people are running for us
• information about people who have signed up for training, or other events with us

We will use your personal information to provide you with the services, products or information you have requested, for administration purposes and to further our charitable aims, including for fundraising activities. We may need to share your information with our funders, service providers, associated organisations and agents for these purposes.

We will use personal information we have collected for our own marketing purposes unless you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can opt out of receiving any marketing materials and/or have any information we hold about you destroyed at any time by contacting us at info@caras.org.uk.

Information that you provide is stored on secure servers. However, the transmission of information over the Internet is never 100% secure so while we try to protect your personal information, we can’t guarantee the security of any information you submit to us via our website or email.

We also take appropriate measures to ensure that the information we receive is kept secure, accurate and up to date and kept only for so long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is used. All access to our secure server is restricted only to authorised staff.

Our website may include links to websites run by other organisations. CARAS is not responsible for the privacy practices of other organisations’ websites so you should read their privacy policies carefully.

When a subject access request is made to CARAS we aim to provide all data within 28 days. A search will be conducted to find all the subject’s data held in Lamplight, in email accounts, in computer or cloud storage, and on paper. If we anticipate this taking longer than 28 days we will respond to the request with an explanation of why it is particularly difficult to retrieve and extend the deadline for the request by a further 28 days. When all a subject’s data is disclosed to them we will ensure no other sensitive data is included with it. The data will be provided via encrypted digital file transfer.

We do not keep the card payment details of any donations from our contactless donation machine, online donation form or JustGiving. We do not accept payment by bank card via post or phone. If you donate to us via bank transfer we will only be able to see the payment reference you put on the payment.

Where possible we do keep a record of how much you donated, the date it was donated, your name and contact details. If you have requested not to be contacted for marketing purposes, we will not enter this information into any of our other systems.

We use select third-party software and services to collect donations and to send our newsletter updates. We ensure our providers have the same levels of protection for your data that we do. We will never share your data with anyone for marketing purposes.

The only occasions when we will share your data are:

• if required to do so by law or in response to a court order or law enforcement agency
• in an emergency, for example where we think someone is at serious risk of being harmed or in immediate danger, we may contact the police, a local health or relevant safeguarding team to intervene.