Sense Scotland was formalised as a charity in 1985. It grew quickly, from its beginnings as a small group of families pressing for services for their children, who were affected by deafblindness and today it supports thousands of disabled people and their families, in many services and projects right across Scotland.

We are a registered charity (SC022097) and a company limited by guarantee (SC147570). For full organisational details please refer to the end of this notice.

We collect personal information about you when you interact with us by completing forms which can be hard copies; or by filling in forms on our website; or by corresponding with us via letter, phone and email; or by providing information in a meeting with us.

This includes personal information you provide when you make contact with us about a service or if you seek support and advice; submit an enquiry; when you start a service with us; when register with us online; when you participate in an event; make a donation and/or complete a direct debit mandate with us; buy from our shops; register for Gift Aid with us; volunteer with us or apply to volunteer with us; apply to work with us or are employed by us as a member of Sense Scotland; provide us with feedback or submit a complaint; as a supplier of goods and services to Sense Scotland; or as someone who commissions Sense Scotland to provide a service.  This is not an exhaustive list and covers the use of social media platforms should you provide us with your personal information through these channels.

We may also receive information about you that is collected from third parties that work with us, for example: HMRC, DWP or JustGiving. These independent parties will only share this information if you have given them consent and/or indicated you wish to share information and/or support Sense Scotland. On occasion, your information may be collected by an organisation working for us, but we continue to hold responsibility for your data at all times.

The information you give us may include your full name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone numbers and other details that enable us to identify you. We also collect financial and credit card information, date of birth information and specific information relating to you as a person we support. We collect this for a variety of reasons, including:

• To respond to your enquiry.
• To provide you and/or your family/carers with support or a service.
• To process a donation you make.
• To process a payment or invoice to you.
• To process Gift Aid claims.
• To provide you with regular updates and news.
• To keep a record of your relationship with us.
• To contact you for feedback and comments.
• To invite you to events.
• To ensure, as an employee, that you get paid on time.

If you give us personal information about a third party (for example if you are asking for advice about a family member), we will confirm that you have their consent to do so or that you have the legal authority to do so.

We will retain your information for as long as you have an active relationship with us, unless you contact us and ask us to delete your information.

Sense Scotland may also retain certain information if we have a legitimate business interest and/or legal requirement to do so. For example we are required to retain financial records and also employment records for a set number of years.

For further information about this please contact us at yourdata@sensescotland.org.uk.

We may also collect sensitive personal information relating to you and your circumstances if you have a Sense Scotland service or ask us for very detailed advice.

For example, this might be information about your medical condition(s). We need your consent to hold and use this information. If we request such information, we will always explain the purpose of our request and how we intend to use it.

We collect and hold sensitive personal data on the children we support. We define anyone under the age of 18 as a child. We will seek consent from a parent or guardian before collecting information about children.

We also collect and manage information from children and aim to use it in a manner that is appropriate to the child and the purpose for which it is provided. We usually collect information from children who use our services and attend our events.

We may receive information about a child direct from a local authority and the local authority will either have consent from you to share that information with us or may use a statutory duty to share this information with us.

In our work with children and families, we recognise and promote the rights of children as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

As noted above, we may receive information about you that is collected from third parties that work with us: for example, HMRC, DWP or JustGiving. These independent parties will only share your information with us if you have indicated that your information can be shared with us and where you have consented to do so. To fully understand how these organisations will process your data, it is important to check their Privacy Notices.

We may use selected companies to provide services and process your personal data on our behalf.  This could include postal mail; follow up telephone calls to our new donors; making telephone calls to our supporters; processing credit card payments; carrying out research on our behalf; and analysing data. We will only ever provide those companies with the information they need to deliver the specific service requested and we ensure that these third party companies adhere to security standards that guarantee your information is protected and, where appropriate, destroyed after use.

We may need to share personal data with the Police, Regulatory Bodies or Legal Advisers if we are required to do so by law.

Our websites use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies. Cookies are small files stored on your computer’s hard drive which are used to collect your personal viewing preferences.

You can obtain more details on the cookies we use and how to manage them from our “Cookie Policy”

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our websites. We use cookies to improve user experience. The information collected allows us to evaluate and improve the accessibility and content of our websites.

All information that you provide through forms submitted online is stored securely and is only accessed by the appropriate staff. This also applies to forms submitted via third parties working on our behalf including, for example, monthly donations and donor campaign forms.

Sense Scotland takes online payments and donations through our websites. All online payment details go through the secure servers of our third party payment provider Worldpay. All online donations are processed securely by JustGiving. These organisations will receive your credit card number and contact information to process the transaction. We do not retain any credit or debit card details from these transactions.

We may receive information from your social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. Permission of access to such information depends on your settings or the privacy policy of the specific social media platform you use.  If in doubt, you should check the privacy policy and privacy settings of any social media platform that you use.

The type and quantity of information we collect depends on why you are providing it. We use your personal information for a multitude of purposes, including:

• To provide a service to you.
• To check on your communication preferences to ensure they are up to date.
• To provide further information about our work, services, activities or products.
• To process Gift Aid donations.
• To process donations or payments we have received from you.
• To record any contact we have with you to help us ensure we provide you with the most appropriate communications.
• To carry out research on the demographics, interests, views, opinions and behaviour of our users and supporters to improve our work, services, activities and products.
• To analyse and report on the number and nature of contacts with the organisation.
• To process your application for a job or a volunteer role with us.
• To provide you with information that we think may be of interest to you if you have agreed to receive it.  For example, to send information on fundraising appeals or to invite you to participate in campaigns or attend events.
• To prevent fraud, credit risk reduction or abuses of our website.

Your information is only used for the purpose(s) you provide it for and in line with the consent you have given us. We will only usually hold your personal data for as long as you have an active relationship with us.

We do not sell your personal information to any third party and we will not disclose any of your personal information without your consent. However, under certain circumstances we have to share your personal information. This only happens on occasions when:

• We are legally required to do so.
• We are concerned about a potential safeguarding issue such as a child protection or adult protection issue.
• We are requested to provide your information by a local authority that requires the information to provide a service for you.
• Regulators such as the Care Inspectorate may also need access to personal data. This is likely to include sensitive personal data which we need to have your consent to share.
• We believe it is necessary to protect or defend our rights, property or the personal safety of our people or visitors to our premises or websites including our social media platforms.

We may need to share personal data with a small number of trusted companies who work with us on specific projects or the delivery of a specific service.

We will only share personal information with these companies if they have signed a contract that ensures that they will abide by the requirements of the Data Protection Act and GDPR regulations.

We are committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure in accordance with the current data protection legislation and GDPR regulations.

We have implemented the appropriate security policies and technical controls to ensure your information is protected. For example, we have secure servers, firewalls and SSL encryption that are routinely monitored. We follow payment card industry (PCI) security compliance guidelines when processing credit card payments and personal information transferred between locations will be encrypted and password protected.

We continue to undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff and, where appropriate, volunteers and approved contractors.

We may use external companies to collect or process personal data on our behalf. We do comprehensive checks on these companies before we work with them and then work closely with them for the duration of our working relationship. This process is carried out so we can certify that these companies reach our data management expectations and requirements.

If you use one of our services; respond to a fundraising appeal; take part in a fundraising event; support one of our campaigns; apply to work or volunteer with us; express an interest in our work or one of our fundraising activities, we may also hold your personal information in paper files. We will also collect and retain your information if you send feedback about our services or make a complaint. Any personal information stored in hard copies will be securely stored and only relevant staff members will be given access to it.

It is important that we keep your personal information and communication preferences up to date. You can contact us at any time if your personal information or circumstances change or if you wish to change your preferences for receiving information from us.

Every time we contact you, whether it is providing you with a newsletter; inviting you to take part in a fundraising appeal; or to notify you of an event or a meeting, we will ask you if we have the correct contact details for you.

You have a right to ask us to stop processing your personal data and, if it is no longer necessary nor required for the purpose you provided it to us, we will do so.

With your consent, we will contact you to let you know about current events; the progress we are making; to seek your feedback and views; or to ask for donations and/or other support.  We provide clear preference questions within our marketing appeals to make it easy for you to change how you want us to communicate with you. This will include an option on how to ‘opt out’ of our marketing information. If you would like to change these preferences immediately please contact us at: yourdata@sensescotland.org.uk.

In addition, you have a right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you. If you want a copy of your personal data, send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity by post to:  Data Protection Officer, Sense Scotland, 43 Middlesex St, Glasgow G41 1EE. If there are any discrepancies in the information we provide, please let us know and we will correct them.

If you have any questions regarding your information or your communication preferences please send these to: yourdata@sensescotland.org.uk.

You have the following individual rights under Data Protection Law:

• The right to correct any mistakes in your information.
• Rights in relation to automated decision-making, including profiling. Automated decision-making is making a decision solely by automated means without human involvement and profiling involves automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain things about an individual.
• The right to restrict or prevent your personal data being processed for direct marketing purposes and in certain other limited circumstances.
• The right to compensation for damage caused by contravention of the Data Protection Laws.
• The right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you believe we have not handled your personal data in accordance with the Data Protection Laws.
• The Right to erasure of the personal data we hold.

If you would like to discuss any of these rights in more detail please contact us at yourdata@sensescotland.org.uk.

If you are concerned that we have used your personal data for fundraising purposes when you have not given us consent to do so then you can contact the Scottish Fundraising Standards Panel who can advise how to make a complaint: www.goodfundraising.scot or on 0808 164 2520.

If you do not think that we have processed your data in accordance with this Privacy Notice or would like to make a complaint, please contact us in the first instance at:

By Email:        yourdata@sensescotland.org.uk

By Post:          Data Protection Officer, Sense Scotland, 43 Middlesex Street,
Glasgow, G41 1EE

By Phone:       0300 330 9292

If you are not satisfied with our response you may then wish to contact:

The Information Commissioner’s Office – Scotland
45 Melville Street
Edinburgh
EH3 7HL

Telephone: 0303 123 1115       Email: Scotland@ico.org.uk

This Privacy Notice was last updated in May 2018.

It may be necessary for Sense Scotland to change this privacy notice from time to time.  If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on the Sense Scotland website or, if appropriate, by contacting you directly.

Please do check the Sense Scotland website from time to time though for the latest version and let us know if you ever have any questions or concerns.