Privacy

HSC Northern Ireland Adoption and Foster Care respects the security and privacy concerns of users of this and all its websites. We are notified under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 and we confirm that we will comply with the GDPR and the Data Protection Act in all our dealings with your personal data.

The purpose of this privacy policy is to inform you of the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. By using the website, you agree to and accept the terms of this privacy policy.

We collect the following information or data about you when you use our website:

  • questions, queries or feedback you leave, including your email address if you contact us – this information will be kept secure and confidential
  • information on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques

This data can be viewed by authorised people in Health and Social Care and our partners to:

  • see what is most effective about our websites
  • improve the site by monitoring how you use it
  • gather feedback to improve our services
  • respond to any feedback you send us, if you’ve asked us to
  • provide you with information about local services if you want it

As a general rule, no personal information (ie. name, address, IP address, telephone number, e-mail address) is automatically collected from users of this website. However, there may be circumstances in which users voluntarily supply such information. In this event, any such information will be kept secure and confidential and will be used only for those purposes made known to you at the time the information is collected, or for the purposes specified in this privacy policy, and will be retained only for as long as necessary to serve those purposes.

Where your data is stored

We store your data on secure servers in the UK.

Keeping your data secure

Our site is encrypted with our HSC SSL Certificate and traffic to and from the site (including form submissions) is as secure as we can make it.

Disclosing your information

We do not share data with other organisations unless the law permits or requires us to do so. We will share personal information only with our authorised data processors who must at all times act on Belfast Trust instructions as the Data Controller under the GDPR and the Data Protection Act.

We won’t share your information with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we won’t pass on your details to other websites.

Cookies
A cookie is a small text file on the user’s browser and hard drive that uniquely identifies the user’s browser. Cookies help us analyse how users use our website. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

There are two types of cookies: persistent cookies and session cookies. Session cookies are temporary and are erased when the browser exits. Persistent cookies remain on the user’s hard drive until the user erases them or until they expire. This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google. Google Analytics uses cookies. The information generated by the cookie (including your IP address) is used to evaluate website use and compile reports on website activity.

In general this website automatically gathers certain usage information such as the number and frequency of visitors to the website, time spent on the website and pages visited.  This helps us to determine our visitors’ preferences and helps us to improve our website .

Links
This website contains links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties that run any other websites. Please refer to their own privacy policies for more information.

Further information

For further information on the use of personal data and to access the privacy policy for each trust area, please visit the links below: