Confidentiality Policy

All employees and volunteers are required to abide by Carrickfergus & District Senior Gateway Club’s Confidentiality Policy.

You must keep all information given to you or created by you during your employment confidential at all times while you are a volunteer and after your voluntary service ends.

Information of a personal and private nature will be treated sensitively and remain confidential within Carrickfergus & District Senior Gateway Club. This means that the information will not be given to anyone outside the Gateway Club without the permission of those to whom it relates.  All notes, records of meetings etc. will be kept on files, marked “Private and Confidential”, which will be securely stored.  The files will only be accessed by those members of Carrickfergus & District Senior Gateway Club’s staff authorised to do so.

No information gathered for monitoring or evaluation of our work will identify individual cases.Procedure

Personal and private information about people with learning disabilities and their families should be treated sensitively and only shared on a “need to know” basis within the organisation.

Discussion about personal matters relating to families and individuals should take place in a private office.  Open discussion in general offices is discouraged.

Files containing personal information should be marked “Private & Confidential” and should not be left open and unattended in the office and should be put away securely overnight.

Sensitive or private computer held information should be stored on a disk, with a password, and should be kept in a secure place.  All disks which come into the office from outside must be scanned for viruses before use on office computers.

Unless there are exceptional circumstances, information should only be shared with outside agencies with the permission of the individual(s) concerned.

In some circumstances there may be a need to share information with outside agencies, but only with the prior permission of the people concerned.  If this is likely, those concerned should be advised at the outset. See Point 7 below – Procedure for breaking confidentiality.

Only in exceptional circumstances, such as the following, should confidentiality be broken:

• a threat to life
• physical, sexual, financial or other abuse to or by another person (adult or child)
• a health and safety risk to other people in the workplace
• a disclosure required by law or a court order.

Procedure for breaking confidentiality

Because breaking confidentiality is a serious matter, the following procedure should ideally be followed prior to disclosure.

If, in any discussion, information is being given which the Carrickfergus & District Senior Gateway Club

employee/volunteer believes may have to be shared with other Agencies:-

• they should stop the conversation;
• explain that such information and any further detail that might be forthcoming, could require them to pass it on to outside agencies;
• proceed if the informant gives permission  under those conditions, confirming that they had given their consent, should further action be needed.
• if permission is refused, terminate the conversation and refer the person to the club leader or in their absence to the assistant leader.
• maintain written records of the process and the decisions taken throughout.