Group , take the protection of your personal data very seriously and strictly adhere to the rules laid out by data protection laws and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR-EU and GDPR-UK). Cera Group comprises Advanced Community Health Care Limited, Cera Care Operations Limited, Cyprian Care Limited, Cera Care Operations (Scotland) Limited, GemCare SouthWest Limited, Premier Care Limited, HomeCare4U Limited, Premier Care (Housing) Limited, Premier Care (Lancashire) Limited, Mediline Home Care Limited, North West Community Services Training Limited and any other subsidiaries acquired. This privacy policy explains how we collect and use your personal information:
by being a user (“Service User“) or prospective Service User of our care services including but not limited to: On Demand Care, Elderly Care, Palliative Care, Live-in Care, Dementia Care and Private Nursing (our “Services“);
by being a person(s) arranging the care for and on behalf of a Service User (“Client“);
by being next of kin to a Service User or prospective Service user of our Services; or
by interacting with our content and/or services including by applying to be one of our carers or employees.
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for monitoring and providing guidance with our GDPR status. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the contact information in section 17 of this privacy notice.
We collect your personal data for one of the following purposes:
We only collect and use personal information about you when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we use it where:
Where legitimate interest is identified as a lawful basis, we will undertake a legitimate interest assessment which is a three-part test covering:
The purpose test – to identify the legitimate interest
Necessity test – to consider if the processing is necessary for the purpose identified
Balancing test – considering the individual's interests, rights or freedoms and whether these override the legitimate interests identified.
We collect personal information from you. The categories of personal information that we may collect, store and use about you include:
We will only process special category data where we have an Article 9 exception allowing us to do so, in this case, this is processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the controller or of the data subject in the field of employment, and for the purposes of Health and Social Care as per the Data Protection Act 2018, schedule 1 Part 1. Where special category data may be collected during the course of activities relating to photography for marketing and publicity materials, we will rely on explicit consent.
We are one of many organisations working in the health and care system to improve care for patients and the public) .
Whenever you use a health or care service, such as attending Accident & Emergency or using Community Care services, important information about you is collected in a patient record for that service. Collecting this information helps to ensure you get the best possible care and treatment.
The information collected about you when you use these services can also be used and provided to other organisations for purposes beyond your individual care, for instance to help with:
This may only take place when there is a clear legal basis to use this information. All these uses help to provide better health and care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential patient information about your health and care is only used like this where allowed by law.
Most of the time, anonymised data is used for research and planning so that you cannot be identified in which case your confidential patient information isn't needed.
You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. If you are happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. If you do choose to opt out your confidential patient information will still be used to support your individual care.
To find out more or to register your choice to opt out, please visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters. On this web page you will:
You can also find out more about how patient information is used at:
https://www.hra.nhs.uk/information-about-patients/ (which covers health and care research); and
https://understandingpatientdata.org.uk/what-you-need-know (which covers how and why patient information is used, the safeguards and how decisions are made)
You can change your mind about your choice at any time.
Data being used or shared for purposes beyond individual care does not include your data being shared with insurance companies or used for marketing purposes and data would only be used in this way with your specific agreement.
Health and care organisations have until 2020 to put systems and processes in place so they can be compliant with the national data opt-out and apply your choice to any confidential patient information they use or share for purposes beyond your individual care. Our organisation is compliant with the national data opt-out policy.
We pride ourselves on ensuring that your personal data is only retained for the period that we need it for, or in accordance with laws, regulations and professional obligations that we are subject to. All personal information collected has a defined retention period, which is in-line with our retention policy. If you would like to find out how long your information is being retained, please see “additional information“, section 17 of this policy.
We take the responsibility for protecting your privacy very seriously and we will ensure your data is secured in accordance with our obligations under the Data Protection laws. We have in place technical and organisational measures to ensure personal information is secured and to prevent your personal data from being accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We have in place a robust access control policy which limits access to your personal data to those employees, contractors and other third parties who only have a business need to know. The processing of your personal data will only take place subject to our instruction.
We have policies and procedures to handle any potential data security breaches and data subjects, third parties and any applicable regulators will be notified where we are legally required to do so.
We have ensured that all employees have had information security and data protection training. If you would like more details of the security we have in place, please see “additional information“, section 17 of this policy.
We do not knowingly collect information on children. If we have collected personal information on a child, please contact us immediately using the details in section 17, so we can remove this information without any undue delay.
In this Section, we have summarised the rights that you have under General Data Protection Regulation. Some of the rights are complex, and not all the details have been included in our summaries. Accordingly, you should read the relevant laws and guidance from the regulatory authorities for a full explanation of these rights.
Your principal rights under General Data Protection Regulation are:
The right to object
You can exercise this right if
Processing is for direct marketing purposes
The right of access
You or any third party acting on your behalf with your authority may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you without charge.
We will ask to verify your identity or request evidence from the third party that they are acting on your behalf before releasing any personal data we hold about you.
The right of rectification
If you believe the personal data we hold about you is incorrect or incomplete you have the right to correct this and you may exercise this right along with the right to restrict processing until these corrections are made.
If there is no legal basis or legitimate reason for processing your personal data, you may request that we erase it.
If you are exercising your right to rectification
The right to data portability
If you have any question about these rights, please see “additional information“, section 17 of this policy.
Where you have given consent for processing, or explicit consent in relation to the processing of special category data, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time, but this will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.
Where we need to collect personal data by law or in order to process your instructions or perform a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to carry out your instructions or perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you. In this case, we may have to cancel our engagement or contract you have with us, but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
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Your personal data is not used in any automated decision making (a decision made solely by automated means without any human involvement).
Where we make an automated decision which has a legal or substantially similar effect, you have the right to speak to us and we may then review the decision, provide a more detailed explanation and assess if the automated decision was made correctly.
Cera Group may disclose your personal data, listed in section 4 to some third parties to help us deliver our services/products. All third parties are contractually bound to protect the personal data we provide to them. We may use several or all of the following categories of recipients:
In this section, we provide information about the circumstances in which your personal data may be transferred and stored in countries outside the United Kingdom (UK).
We may share personal information to third parties outside of the United Kingdom (UK). Any personal information transferred will only be processed on our instruction and we ensure that information security at the highest standard would be used to protect any personal information as required by the Data Protection laws.
Where personal data is transferred outside of the UK to a country without an adequacy decision, we will ensure appropriate safeguards are in place prior to the transfer. These could include:
Standard Contractual Clauses
International Data Transfer Agreement
Binding Corporate Rules
An exception as defined in Article 49 of the EU GDPR
For more information about transfers and safeguarding measures, please contact us using the information in section 17.
We take any complaints about our collection and use of personal information very seriously.
If you think that our collection or use of personal information is unfair, misleading, or inappropriate, or have any other concern about our data processing, please raise this with us in the first instance.
To make a complaint, please contact us via email on dpo@ceracare.co.uk
Alternatively, you can contact us:
By Post: Cera Care, Labs Hawley Lock, 1 Water Lane, London, NW1 8NZ.
By Phone: 0330 433 1537
Alternatively, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office:
By Post:
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
By Website: Click Here
By Phone: 0303 123 1113 (Local rate) or 01625 545 745 (National rate)
Your trust is important to us. That is why we are always available to talk with you at any time and answer any questions concerning how your data is processed. If you have any questions that could not be answered by this privacy policy or if you wish to receive more in-depth information about any topic within it, please contact our DPO and Compliance Team via email on dpo@ceracare.co.uk.
We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated on 09/10/23
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.