Confidentiality

At 0800 What’s Up, your confidentiality, privacy and safety are really important to us. When you call or chat online with us, you can be sure we won’t tell anyone outside 0800 What’s Up what you’ve said.

Every time we have contact with you and collect personal information about you or others we make sure we follow the rules set out by the Privacy Act 1993.  

Your ‘personal information’ is information about yourself (name, age etc) as well as anything you tell us about yourself, such as what is happening or how you are feeling.

When you call or chat to us online our priority is to listen to you, and if we can, try to help you.  We will use anything you tell us to help but won’t use it or share it for any other purpose.

The only exceptions to this are:

• You ask us to
• We believe your life or someone else's life is in danger
• You're being hurt by someone in a position of trust who is able to hurt other children like a teacher, religious leader, sports coach, police officer or doctor
• You tell us that you're seriously hurting another person
• You tell us about another child who's being hurt and is not able to tell someone or understand what is happening to them.
• If we are required to do so under the law, for example, if a judge orders us to.

Before we make any decision to break confidentiality and share information in these situations, each case is individually assessed through a rigorous review, before approving it. Where possible we will let you know if we need to talk to or involve another person or agency, but sometimes in situations of imminent danger, we must break confidentiality quickly, without telling you first, to keep you or others safe.

What information do we collect?

When you visit our website or when you contact us, we collect some of your personal information as well as some general information. The type of information we collect is:

• Personal details you give us when you call or chat with us (your name, age, address and contact information). We will require your name and age but other information is not mandatory to give us and you can still chat if you don’t give us these details; it is always up to you whether you want to give us this information
• Records of our calls and chats, including the location, date, time and duration of the call and their content
• Statistical and general information collected from our Instagram page e.g. numbers and age groups of our followers.
• Visitor trends on our website

How do we use the information you give us?

We use the general information we collect to help keep the content on our website relevant and up-to-date. We can also use statistical and general information to inform our marketing and promotional activities, and our advocacy for children’s rights and well-being. We can also use information about the general nature of what you call about (e.g. bullying, problems with friends) to inform statistics and trends.

If you have given us your personal details when you call us or chat with us online, we may also use this information if:

• We need prevent or lessen a serious threat to you, or someone else; and
• We need to involve other agencies to keep you or to keep another person safe; or
• We are required to do so under the law

How do we (and our Live Chat supplier ) store and share your information?

All records are stored securely and kept protected at all times within 0800 What’s Up.  

We store some personal details and records of previous conversations so we can check back about the things we have talked with you about. This is especially useful if you like talking with the same counsellor.

We may share general information during staff training sessions to help improve our service delivery and experience.

We use a company to help us provide the Live Chat platform for you to chat to us through. As a separate company they are required to keep your information secure as well. You can read their Data Protection policy here.

Can I ask for my personal information?
You can ask us for a copy of any personal information that we hold about you. You can email us on whatsup@barnardos.org.nz to request this information.
If you are not sure about how to make a request or what to ask for, get in touch and we can help you through it.

What if the information you hold about me is wrong or I want to correct something?
If you share your personal information with us in a way that means we can identify you, you can ask us to correct your personal information. You can email us on whatsup@barnardos.org.nz to do so.

Do I need to tell my parents that I talked to What’s Up? Can they track my calls and chats?
You don’t have to tell anyone that you have been in touch with us!  Just remember your visits to websites will show up in the visits History tab in your internet Settings. If you want to delete your visits from the website History tab, you can read how to do this here.

Other things you should know
We don’t have control over your personal device security settings. We take every step and precaution we can to make sure all information is secure from our end and it doesn’t get hacked into. 

Making a complaint

If you have any concerns or want to make a complaint about 0800 What’s Up, you can raise your concerns via our online chat, call us on 0800 942 8787 or email us on whatsupfeedback@barnardos.org.nz