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Terms and conditions

Terms and conditions

Privacy Policy

Association for Children with a Disability (ACD) respects the privacy of all individuals. We acknowledge and respect each individual’s right to privacy and are committed to maintaining the confidentiality of personal information.

ACD complies with our privacy and confidentiality obligations set out in the Privacy Act.

ACD works towards the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). The APPs set standards for how we collect, use, disclose, store, secure and dispose of your personal information. You can read the APPs on the website of The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au.

What is personal information?

Personal information is information or an opinion that identifies an individual. This means information that is about you, and that could reasonably make you identifiable, for example: name, address, email address, phone number, date of birth.

Collection of sensitive information

Sensitive information is a special category of personal information. It includes information such as health information (including information about disabilities, illness and injuries), information relating to racial or ethnic origin or information about a criminal record.

Sensitive information can only be collected with your consent.

Consent needs to be informed, given voluntarily, current and specific and you need to have the capacity to give consent.

For children under the age of 15, we rely on parental consent. For children aged 15 to 18, we ask the client if their child understands the consequences of providing consent to disclose sensitive information and confirm whether they give this consent.

We are authorised to collect sensitive information without consent in limited circumstances as prescribed by the APPs.

How and why we collect personal information

ACD only collects personal information that is required to safely deliver services. ACD takes reasonable steps to make sure personal information is accurate, complete and up to date.

We collect personal information in many ways including: via phone conversations, online forms, by email and from third parties.

ACD only collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information to safely perform our functions and activities. Our functions and activities includes:

  • Empowering families with knowledge, skills and confidence to advocate for their children with disability
  • Building inclusive practice across sectors and among professionals that work with children with disability and their families
  • Influencing public policy and programs to advance the rights of children with disability and their families

Our empowerment work involves us collecting and holding information about you and your child’s disability and support needs. This enables us to assess eligibility, provide information and advocacy support tailored to your child’s situation, and ensure we are reaching the diversity of Victorian families. If you provide incomplete or inaccurate information to us, we may not be able to provide you with the services you require.

Our work to build inclusive practice may involve us collecting personal information. For example, we may collect names and email addresses of professionals who attend a training workshop via a third-party online booking platform.

Our policy and systemic advocacy work generally does not involve us collecting personal information. However, we may collect personal information through surveys or consultations that we run to inform our policy and advocacy work. We may use or disclose personal information in work with government, for example, if we use case studies. Unless we have gained prior written consent, case studies are deidentified or based on general experiences families raise with us.

We may send you our monthly newsletter. We collect, hold and use your contact details to email you the newsletter. You may unsubscribe from our mailing/marketing lists at any time.

When we collect personal information we will, where appropriate and where possible, explain to you why we are collecting the information and how we plan to use it.

Although ACD primarily collects personal information to manage your needs in providing our service to you, we may also collect, use and disclose personal information about you for other related purposes. This may include meeting government and regulatory requirements around quality assurance, compliance, and complaint management. For example, we need to disclose personal information about you to DFFH for auditing requirements under our funding agreement and/or legislation.

Anonymity

Due to the way we perform our functions and activities, it may not be possible for ACD to provide you with our services if you don’t provide us with any personal information. In some circumstances, we may be able to provide you with general advice if you contact us anonymously. For example, to access our Support Line services, we generally need to collect a name and a way of contacting you back such as phone number or email address. If you choose not to provide us with these details – for example by leaving no name and providing an alternate contact number – we will still return your call but may only be able to provide general advice.

Third parties and indirect collection

We try to only collect personal information directly from the person the information is about, or their parent/carer. In some circumstances we may be provided with personal information by third parties, such as medical professionals. When we collect personal information indirectly from third parties, we take reasonable steps to make you aware of the information we have collected about you.

For example, sometimes other professionals contact ACD to seek support for their client. ACD encourages these professional to seek consent from families to pass specific information to ACD, or to ask the family to contact ACD directly for support.

We only actively seek to indirectly collect personal information about you from third parties with your consent. For example, we may reach out to a medical professional or service provider to gain additional information about your circumstances and your advocacy issue.

Disclosure of personal information

ACD will only disclose personal information about you to third parties where:

  • You have consented to the disclosure
  • Disclosure is in accordance with the purpose for which we collected the information
  • We are required or authorised by law, such as a subpoena from police or a court, or mandatory reporting

ACD may have a legal obligation to disclose personal information, such as to government or under health regulations, or where such disclosure is permitted by law, including under privacy laws.

ACD will only discuss your personal information with other agencies or service providers with your consent. This will be done via a ‘Consent to release of confidential information form’ or by you providing written consent via email or text.

In instances where ACD is required to disclose personal information under a legal obligation, ACD will inform you.

Storage and security of personal information

ACD takes all reasonable steps to safeguard the security of personal information we collect and hold from unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure. We store your personal information electronically and/or in hard copy documents.

ACD takes steps to reasonably protect your electronically stored information including password protected access, restricted access to certain information on a ‘need to know’ basis (such as information about disabilities), appropriate ICT protection such as firewall and virus protection, staff training and workplace policies and procedures. Hard copy files are stored in secure cabinets onsite.

Personal information that is no longer required is destroyed or appropriately de-identified. This may include shredding paper files in a confidential shredding bin, regularly deleting information held on third-party platforms and de-identifying personal information from workshops and consultations.

Access to your personal information

You can request access to the personal information we hold about you. ACD will give you access to this information, subject to certain exceptions. ACD will respond to access to personal information requests within 30 days.

In order to protect your personal information, we will require you to provide identification before releasing the requested information to you.

If ACD refuses your request to access your information, we will explain it in writing.

Correction of your personal information

You can ask us to correct or update the personal information that we hold about you. ACD takes reasonable steps to ensure personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. We do this by:

  • Collecting information directly from you
  • Pulling data directly from platforms to avoid re-typing details
  • Ensuring systems automatically update and reflect changes when any information is corrected

If you think the information we have is not up to date or is inaccurate, please let us know so we can update our records to continue to provide quality services to you.

ACD will respond to requests to correct personal information within 30 days. There is no charge for making a correction request. If a request for correction is refused, ACD will explain it in writing.

Complaints

If you have any queries or complaints about our Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, please contact:

Privacy Officer

Level 1, 587 Canterbury Road, Surrey Hills VIC 3127

feedback@acd.org.au

03 9880 7000 or 1800 654 013 (regional)

If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you can make a complaint to the following bodies.

Website privacy

Your privacy is important to us. We respect you as a visitor to our website and we won’t do anything to violate your trust.

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service Google Inc. provides. Google Analytics uses cookies, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how people use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States.

Google will use this information to evaluate your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet use. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information for Google. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data they hold.

To refuse the use of cookies you can select the appropriate settings on your browser. By using this website, you consent to Google processing data about you in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Accessibility

We are committed to providing a website that is accessible to as many people as possible. We work to make sure our website is accessible and useable by people of all abilities.

If you have any problems using the website or accessing the documents on it, please contact us.

Accessibility guidelines

Our aim is to make sure our website meets Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). These guidelines are the internationally recognised benchmark for building accessible websites.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Meeting these guidelines also makes web content more user-friendly for people of all abilities in our community.

Accessibility compliance

We regularly review the accessibility and compliance of our website to make sure we maintain Level AA WCAG 2.0 compliance.

PDF and CSS

All pages on this website use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). If you have trouble viewing the content, you can turn off Style Sheets in your browser. You will then be able to read the content without formatting.

PDF documents are used on this website. PDF is a document format created by Adobe. To open, read and print PDF files, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free from the Adobe website.

Not all PDF documents will work with assistive technology, such as screen readers. If you need help converting PDF documents to an alternative format, please visit the Adobe website.

Contact us

We are continually working to maintain the accessibility of this website. If you have any problems accessing our website, please contact us.

To open, read, and print PDF files, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free from the Adobe website.

Disclaimer

The material on this website is provided for general information only, and on the understanding that the Association for Children with a Disability is not providing professional advice on a particular matter.

The material may include the views and recommendations of third parties, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of the Association for Children with a Disability, or indicate a commitment to a particular course of action.

Before you take any action or decision on the basis of any material on this website you should carefully evaluate its accuracy, currency, completeness and relevance for your purpose and get independent professional advice.

The Association for Children with a Disability (ACD) holds the copyright on material on this website unless otherwise indicated.

All ACD materials (excluding photographs and images) are provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 AU) license. 

You may download, share, display, print and reproduce materials in unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, research-related and noncommercial uses or use within your organisation as long as you credit ACD (and any other nominated parties), do not change the material in any way and do not use it commercially.

Links to ACD

You may insert a link to ACD on your website or other electronic media, provided that:

  • You comply with all the conditions outlined in our copyright notice
  • You clearly differentiate between ACD content and your own content
  • The link does not imply or indicate endorsement, approval, or sponsorship by ACD of your organisation or its published content, products and services
  • You do not attach a commercial charge to the availability of our content
  • The words ‘Association for Children with a Disability’ or ‘ACD’ or the URL ‘acd.org.au’ form part of the link text

ACD reserves the right to request the removal of any link to our content at any time. Upon request from us, you must immediately remove any link to our content.

You may not reproduce or republish the entire content of any of our electronic media, their contents or services (for example by using I-frame or screen scraping techniques).

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Endorsements

You may not use any content that we publish via our electronic media (including, but not limited to, text, trade names, logos, URLs, or interactive devices) in a manner that suggests endorsement, approval, or sponsorship by ACD of your organisation or its published content, products, and services without prior written permission from ACD.

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