Confidentiality & Privacy
Avonside Early Childhood Centre is committed to maintaining the confidence and trust of our staff and families/whanau that attend our Centre by ensuring the privacy of information we hold reflects the requirements of the Privacy Act 2020.
Collection
Personal information is collected by Avonside Early Childhood Centre for the lawful purposes connected with its activities as an employer and as an early childhood care and education centre. The information we collect will be specific and relevant only to the services we provide.
Information collected for employment purposes will in most cases, be collected directly from the individual concerned. Information collected about the children in our care will in most cases, be collected from the parents/caregiver or whānau of each individual child. It is an offence to mislead an agency to access someone else’s personal information.
Avonside Early Childhood Centre will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the individual concerned, or their parents/whanau/caregiver is aware of:
- The fact that the information is being collected
- The purpose for which the information is being collected
- The intended recipients of the information
- Whether or not the supply of the information is voluntary or mandatory and, if mandatory, the particular law under which it is required
- The consequences (if any) for that individual if all or any part of the requested information is not provided
- The rights of access to and correction of information provided.
Uses and Disclosure of Information
Avonside Early Childhood Centre will only use or disclose the information collected for the purpose for which it is provided. We will not use the personal information collected in connection with one purpose for any other purpose without consent, unless that other use is authorised by the Privacy Act 2020.
Personal information may be used to:
- Meet our obligations as a good employer
- Meet our statutory obligations as an early childhood educator
- Audit and monitor the service we provide
We will not disclose personal information to any other party in a form that would identify the individual except if authorised or required by law. We may disclose personal information to other agencies if required as part of our statutory obligations or for law enforcement purposes.
Overseas: We may only disclose personal information if the receiving agency is subject to similar safeguards to those in the Privacy Act. If not the individual concerned must be fully informed that their information may not be adequately protected and they must expressly authorise the disclosure.
Security and Retention
Avonside Early Childhood Centre is committed to ensuring the security of the information held and will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the information we hold is stored securely, whether in written or electronic form and is accessible only to designated staff or management. Avonside Early Childhood Centre will not keep personal information for longer than is required for the purposes for which it may lawfully be used.
Access to personal information in respect to staff is limited to members on the Employment Sub-committee. Access to financial information is limited to the Chairperson, Treasurer, Finance Manager and Centre Manager. Access to personal information about children is limited to teaching staff and management.
Avonside Early Childhood Centre will ensure that personal information is protected by such security safeguards as it is reasonable in the circumstances to take, against:
- Loss
- Access, use, modification, or disclosure
- Any other misuse
When a document containing personal information is not to be kept, the document will be disposed of in a manner that preserves the privacy of the individual.
Access and Correction
Avonside Early Childhood Centre will take all reasonable steps to ensure that all information we collect, use or disclose is accurate and up to date. We recognise that individuals are entitled to request access to personal information that we may hold and seek to correct any information which is incomplete. Avonside Early Childhood Centre will respond to all such requests in a professional manner.
Notifiable privacy breaches
If Avonside Early Childhood Centre has a privacy breach that it believes has caused (or is likely to cause) serious harm, it will notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (PoC) and affected individuals as soon as possible. It is an offence to fail to inform the PoC when there has been a notifiable privacy breach, the threshold for a notifiable breach is ‘serious harm’. ‘NotifyUs’ is the online tool to use for serious breaches or to work out if it is a privacy breach. https://privacy.org.nz/privacy-for-agencies/privacy-breaches/notify-us/