Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW) is committed to protecting all personal information that we hold and making every effort to ensure that it is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.
This policy will help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it, how we store and use it, and if we disclose the information to anyone else. It will also explain what rights and choices you have regarding your personal information.
Information we collect and how we use it
When you give us a donation, sign up to our supporters newsletter, interact with our consultations, or request information on our training for example, we will ask for your personal information. We use this information to manage your engagement with us, such as processing your donation and telling you what we do with the support we receive, sending you information about our campaigns so that you can take part in supporting our work, and to provide you with information on training.
Personal information we collect may include details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making a purchase or donation), as well as information you provide in any communications between us.
This personal information will only be used for the purpose you provided it for, and we do not sell, trade or share a user’s personally identifiable information with anyone else.
Some categories of personal information are more sensitive, such as information about a person’s health, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation for example. These categories of information are known as special category data. If you provide any special category data to us, we will only use this information for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry or application.
Keeping your information safe
We take looking after your information very seriously. We've implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.
Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites.
Who has access to your information
All information we hold is used exclusively by RCEW. We make sure that your data is only seen by people who need to view it for their work and that our staff are trained in protecting your information.
We will only ever share your information with third parties in the process of managing your engagement with us, such as payment processors for donations or partners who manage sponsored events. We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for marketing activities.
However, we may be required to disclose information to third parties if we fear that you, a child or vulnerable adult are at immediate risk of serious harm. In addition, we may also be required to disclose information to the Police or other government officials in connection with the investigation of a crime, mandatory reporting laws, fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity that is illegal, or may expose us, or you, to liability.
How long we hold your information for
We only keep your information as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).
If you have asked us to contact you in connection with training opportunities or fundraising for example, we will always provide the opportunity for you to opt out of these communications. We will also contact you regularly to check whether you are still interested in such information.
Phone and webchat helpline services
Our phone and webchat helpline services are anonymous services. We try to capture as little personally identifiable information about you as possible.
Phone calls
- During a phone call, the operator does not have access to your phone number.
Web chats
- We do not have access to the IP address of the device you are using.
- What you discuss during your session is captured as a written record (a ‘chat transcript’). We occasionally need to review these chat transcripts. This will only happen if we need to check the quality of the service being delivered, if you make a complaint, or if we are concerned about the wellbeing of a child or vulnerable adult during the chat.
- We do not store chat transcripts on an ongoing basis. We either delete them after the session has ended, or within 28 days if there are any issues that need to be resolved.
Our operators handlers record some information about what happened during your call or chat. This includes the type of support provided and how long the call or chat lasted for. This information will not identify you personally, and is only collected for monitoring and reporting purposes.
At the end of each session, you will be asked to voluntarily provide basic demographic information, such as your age, gender and ethnicity. Any information that you provide will not be seen by the operators and no personal information will be requested. This information is requested purely for monitoring and reporting purposes.
Please note that we may be required to report information should we believe a child or vulnerable adult be at risk of serious or immediate harm. If you disclose such circumstances, and provide information that could lead us to identify your name and location, we may have to record such information and provide it to the appropriate authorities.