Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how Samaritans Inc (Samaritans) handles any personal information it collects about you and how we protect your privacy when carrying out our functions and activities.

What is personal information?

Personal information is any information or opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not. It may include sensitive information such as your health information or sexual orientation.

A. What personal information do we collect?

Depending on who you are and how you interact with us, we or our systems may collect some of your personal information, for example when you like us or post a comment on our Facebook page or contact us via email, our website or by phone, to request information or to hire our meeting room.

Our telephone service
When you call Samaritans for emotional support you are free to speak with us anonymously or using a pseudonym. We will only collect personal information about you if you choose to identify yourself to us.

We also receive and/or record some basic information about our calls for the primary purpose of statistical analysis or to provide and/or improve our service.

Our systems may also collect details of the telephone number from which you call us.

Job applicants, board members, volunteers, donors and sponsor contacts

We collect personal information about job applicants, our board members, volunteers, donors and sponsor contacts when you contact, work with, or support us. Depending on who you are, this personal information may include:

your name and contact details

your position, qualifications, past employment history, membership of professional associations, and contact details of referees
your banking and/or payment details

details of your Working With Children checks and National

Police Record checks

information about your
induction, training and performance

health information where relevant to your role with us

We will generally collect your personal information directly from you, however we may also collect your personal information from third parties such as your nominated referees (if you are a job applicant), other workers in our organisation (including other volunteers) and third party service providers with whom we contract, including those who provide us with donation collection services.

B. How do we use and disclose your personal information

Our phone service

Any personal information that we collect from you when you call us (because you have chosen to identify yourself to us) will only be used by us to provide you with this service.

We do not disclose any personal information that we (or our systems) may collect from callers to external organisations (apart from in cases described further below). If you do not identify yourself we will use your information on an anonymous basis or by reference to a pseudonym which might be one that you provide us with.

We may report aggregated, anonymised data to our funders. This aggregated, anonymised information may also be used (and shared with third parties) for research purposes. We take care to ensure your anonymity is preserved in this process.

Volunteers and staff may also listen in to calls for training support, or research purposes, to enable us to improve our service.

On rare occasions (such as where our volunteers are harassed by a caller or where we receive multiple repeat calls from a caller in a manner that compromises our ability to provide our service to the broader community) we reserve the right to access any personal information that we may receive and/or record via our systems and take active steps to ensure that fewer calls or no further calls are received from that caller.

In extreme cases (such as where acts of terrorism are threatened or physical threats are made to our volunteers or staff) we also reserve the right to access any personal information that we may receive and/or record via our systems and report it to the Police or other appropriate regulatory authorities.

We may also be obliged to comply with any Court order or other legal process that requires us to provide access to any personal information that we may hold.

Job applicants, board members, volunteers, donors and sponsor contacts

We may use and disclose your personal information for the purposes of management and HR administration, reporting to external organisations or agencies, research and, with your consent, promotional and training materials. We may also use your details to send you information you have requested, including our publications.

If you are a donor, we may use your personal information to process your donations, to contact you about your fundraising or about further opportunities to support our organisation.

Security

We endeavour to protect any personal information of yours we hold from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We hold personal information in electronic format on secure servers located in Australia and in hard copy in secure locations.

We will otherwise destroy or de-identify personal information we hold when we no longer need it or are no longer required to keep it for legal or operational purposes.

Access and correction

You can request access to, or correction of, your personal information by contacting us on the details below. We may need to verify your identity before giving access or correcting your personal information.

We may charge you for our reasonable costs of providing access to the information you have requested.

Privacy queries and complaints

If you have any questions about your privacy, or if you believe that Samaritans has not handled your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, please contact us on the details below.

Samaritans WA

Phone: (08) 9381 5725

Post: 60 Bagot Road Subiaco WA

Email: admin@thesamaritans.org.au

Changes to our Privacy Policy

Samaritans may from time to time, update or change this Privacy Policy to ensure that it reflects the acts and practices of our organisation. Any changes will take effect from the time that they are updated and posted on our website.

Last updated: October 2021

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Samaritans WA acknowledges and respects the traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owners of the land on which we live and work, the first people of this country. We pay our respect to their culture and their Elders past, present and emerging.

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