Wesley Community Services Limited (Wesley Mission, we, us or our) understands that protecting your personal information is important. This Privacy Policy sets out our commitment to protecting the privacy of personal information provided to us, or collected by us, when interacting with you and providing our services.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. If you provide personal information to us, you understand we will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You do not have to provide personal information to us, however, if you do not, it may affect our ability to work with you as a client or supplier of our business.
1. Who does Wesley Mission collect personal information from?
- clients and prospective clients of Wesley Mission services, and their family members, guardians or authorised representative;
- supporters of, and donors to, Wesley Mission;
- individuals who register for and/or attend Wesley Mission events;
- individuals who participate in our supporter surveys and appeals;
- prospective Wesley Mission employees, volunteers and contractors;
- Wesley Mission employees, volunteers (who in this Privacy Policy include foster carers) and contractors;
- suppliers of services to Wesley Mission, including health care professionals and providers of other goods and services;
- Wesley Mission website users and individuals who interact with us through social media; and
- individuals who otherwise interact with Wesley Mission.
2. How does Wesley Mission collects personal information?
We collect personal information in a variety of ways, including:
- when you provide it directly to us, including face-to-face, over the phone, over email, or online;
- when you complete any of our forms, such as a contact enquiry form, event registration form or sign up to our newsletters, or respond to surveys;
- when you use any website we operate (including from any analytics and cookie providers or marketing providers. See the “Cookies” section below for more detail on the use of cookies);
- from third parties, such as:
- Commonwealth, State or Territory government agencies as well as independent agencies including the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency or the Office of the Aged Care and Safety Commissioner;
- your medical practitioner or other healthcare professional;
- other commercially contracted organisations that have provided you with care and/or services;
- your authorised representative, guardian or family members;
- our clients, when they provide information regarding details of their appointed attorney, guardian or other alternative decision makers and next of kin;
- other commercially contracted organisations for example fundraising and telemarketing organisations to assist Wesley Mission in logistically contacting supporters for donor and program related reasons; and
- referees, as part of an assessment of your suitability for a position you are applying for with us; and
- from publicly available sources.
If we receive personal information about you from a third party, we will protect it as set out in this Privacy Policy. If you are a third party providing personal information about somebody else, you represent and warrant that you have such person’s consent to provide the personal information to us.
3. What personal information does Wesley Mission collect and hold?
Personal information is information or opinion, whether true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not, that identifies a person or from which a person can reasonably be identified. The types of personal information we may collection about you include:
- Identity Data including your name, age, date of birth and photographic identification.
- Contact Data including your telephone number, address and email.
- Financial Data including information about your financial status and your social security status (if applicable) and bank account and payment card details (through our third party payment processor, who stores such information and we do not have access to that information).
- Transaction Data including details about payments to you from us and from you to us and other details of products and services you have purchased from us or we have purchased from you.
- Donation Data including details about donations you have made to Wesley Mission.
- Technical and Usage Data when you access any of our websites or platforms, details about your internet protocol (IP) address, browser session and geo-location data, statistics on page views and sessions, device and network information, acquisition sources, search queries and/or browsing behaviour, access and use of our website (including through the use of Internet cookies or analytics), and communications with our website.
- Interaction Data including information you provide to us when you participate in any interactive features, including appeals, surveys, contests, promotions, activities or events.
- Marketing and Communications Data including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
- Professional Data including where you are a worker of ours or applying for a role with us, your professional history such as your previous positions and professional experience, visa information, or whether you hold required authorisations or licences, Working with Children Checks, and your ABN and TFN, if applicable.
- Sensitive information is a sub-set of personal information that is given a higher level of protection. Sensitive information means information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion, trade union or other professional associations or memberships, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation or practices, criminal records, health information or biometric information. The types of sensitive information we collect include:
- where you are a user of our services, information about you or your dependents, including:
- health information, including individual or family medical history, lifestyle choices and healthcare preferences and wishes;
- racial or ethnic origin (so that we can provide culturally appropriate care where possible); and
- details of any support plan or treatment report provided to us;
- where you apply for a role with us:
- results of criminal records checks; and
- your professional registrations and associations (where applicable);
- where you attend our events, we may ask for dietary requirements if we are arranging catering for you.
Providing us with accurate and complete information is important for the safety, quality and effectiveness of the services we provide. If you do not provide accurate and complete information, or you withhold information, it may affect the safety, quality and effectiveness of the services we provide and the funding available to you or us for those services. In certain circumstances, this may mean that we are not able to provide you with services.
More detail about the personal information (including sensitive information) we collect and why is set out below. If you have any concerns about the personal information we have asked you to provide, please raise those concerns with us.
4. Why does Wesley Mission collect, hold, use and disclose personal information?
Personal information: We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
- to assess your eligibility and whether to take you on as a new client for our different services, including your eligibility to entitlements Aged Care Act 1997 (Cth) or other legislation relating to the services you may receive;
- to work with you as a client or supplier of our business, including to register your attendance at our events, assess your applications, manage your appointments with us, provide you with our services (including by developing care and services plans and communicating with your nominated healthcare professionals);
- to enter into contracts and grant funding arrangements for the services or accommodation we may provide;
- for fundraising campaigns, including to accept donations from you and issue you with a receipt;
- in order to liaise with other health professionals and health services that may be involved in managing or treating you, such as general practitioners and dentists;
- to contact and communicate with you about our business, including in response to any support requests you lodge with us or other enquiries you make with us;
- where we provide services to you, to liaise with your authorised representative and to contact nominated individuals, such as family members, if requested or needed;
- to contact and communicate with you about any enquiries you make with us via any website we operate;
- for internal record keeping, administrative, invoicing and billing purposes;
- for analytics, market research and business development, including to operate and improve our business, associated applications and associated social media platforms;
- for quality assurance and evaluation purposes and to train our staff, manage their workloads, performance and career progression;
- for advertising and marketing, including to send you promotional information about our events and experiences and information that we consider may be of interest to you;
- to run promotions, competitions and/or offer additional benefits to you;
- if you have applied to work with us, to consider your application; and
- to comply with our legal obligations (including residential aged care, community care or retirement living services laws).
Sensitive information: We only collect, hold, use and disclose sensitive information for the following purposes:
- any purposes you consent to;
- the primary purpose for which it is collected;
- secondary purposes that are directly related to the primary purpose for which it was collected, including disclosure to the below listed third parties as reasonably necessary to work with you as a customer or supplier of our business;
- to contact emergency services, or to speak with your authorised presentative, family, partner or support person where we reasonably believe there is a serious risk to the life, health or safety of you or another person and it is impracticable for us to obtain your consent; and
- if otherwise required or authorised by law.
5. Social Networking
We use social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube to communicate with the public about our work. When you communicate with us using these services we may collect your personal information, but we only use it to help us to communicate with you. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These services have their own privacy policies. You can access the privacy policies for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube on their websites.
6. Wesley Mission’s disclosures of Personal Information to third parties
Personal information: We will only disclose personal information (excluding sensitive information) to third parties where it is necessary as part of our business, where we have your consent, or where permitted by law. This means that we may disclose personal information (excluding sensitive information) to:
- our employees, contractors, volunteers and/or related entities;
- IT service providers, data storage, web-hosting and server providers;
- marketing or advertising providers;
- professional advisors, bankers, auditors, our insurers and insurance brokers;
- payment systems operators or processors;
- our existing or potential agents or business partners;
- your authorised representative or other nominated individuals, such as family members, if requested or needed;
- sponsors or promoters of any promotions or competition we run;
- if we merge with, or are acquired by, another company, or sell all or a portion of our assets, your personal information may be disclosed to our advisers and any prospective purchaser’s advisers and may be among the assets transferred;
- courts, tribunals and regulatory authorities, in the event you fail to pay for goods or services we have provided to you;
- courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities and law enforcement officers, as required or authorised by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights;
- third parties to collect and process data, such as analytics providers and cookies; and
- any other third parties as required or permitted by law, such as where we receive a subpoena.
Sensitive information: We will only disclose sensitive information with your consent or where permitted by law. This means that we may disclose sensitive information to:
- our employees, contractors, volunteers and/or related entities;
- other health care professionals or persons/entities as necessary to provide our services or who may be involved with treating you;
- your guardian, authorised representative or other nominated individuals, such as family members, if requested or needed;
- IT service providers, data storage, web-hosting and server providers;
- professional advisors;
- if we merge with, or are acquired by, another company, or sell all or a portion of our assets, your personal information may be disclosed to our advisers and any prospective purchaser’s advisers and may be among the assets transferred;
- courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities and law enforcement officers, as required or authorised by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights;
- third parties to collect and process data, such as analytics providers and cookies; and
- any other third parties as required or permitted by law, such as where we receive a subpoena.
7. Cookies
Cookies: We may use cookies on our website from time to time. Cookies are text files placed in your computer's browser to store your preferences. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your email address or other personally identifiable information. However, they do recognise you when you return to our online website and allow third parties to cause our advertisements to appear on your social media and online media feeds as part of our retargeting campaigns. If and when you choose to provide our online website with personal information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.
Managing Cookies: You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.
8. Analytics and marketing
Google Analytics: We may use Google Analytics Advertising Features. We and third-party vendors may use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) or other first-party identifiers, and third-party cookies (such as Google advertising cookies) or other third-party identifiers together. These cookies and identifiers may collect Technical and Usage Data about you.
Opting out of Google Analytics: You can opt-out of Google Analytics Advertising Features including using a Google Analytics Opt-out Browser add-on found here. To opt-out of personalised ad delivery on the Google content network, please visit Google’s Ads Preferences Manager here or if you wish to opt-out permanently even when all cookies are deleted from your browser you can install their plugin here. To opt out of interest-based ads on mobile devices, please follow these instructions for your mobile device:
- On android open the Google Settings app on your device and select “ads” to control the settings.
- On iOS devices with iOS 6 and above use Apple’s advertising identifier.
To learn more about limiting ad tracking using this identifier, visit the settings menu on your device. To find out how Google uses data when you use third party websites or applications, please see here.
Facebook/Meta Analytics: We may use tools provided by Meta, such as the Meta Pixel, advanced matching, and Conversions API. These allow us to measure ad performance and deliver ads that may be relevant to you on Meta platforms based on your activity on our website/app. You can control whether we can join data from third party partners with your Meta account for ads by adjusting your preferences within Meta's settings. You can disconnect this data from your Meta account by changing your settings for Off-Facebook activity. For more information, please see Meta's Privacy Policy here.
Restrict and unsubscribe: To object to, or remove yourself from, processing for direct marketing/unsubscribe from our email database or opt-out of communications (including marketing communications), please contact us using the details below or opt-out using the opt-out facilities provided in the communication.
9. Can you interact with Wesley Mission anonymously?
You have the option of not identifying yourself, or using a pseudonym, when interacting with Wesley Mission in certain circumstances, for example, when making a general enquiry about our services. However, it is generally not practicable or lawful for Wesley Mission to interact with you anonymously or pseudonymously on an ongoing basis, for example, if you wish to make a more detailed enquiry about our services or become a client. If we do not collect personal information about you, we may be unable to provide you with the information or services you have asked us to provide.
10. How does Wesley Mission hold personal information?
Wesley Mission holds personal information in paper-based and electronic records systems. Personal information may be collected in paper-based documents and converted to electronic form for storage (with the original paper-based documents either archived or securely destroyed).
Information held in paper-based form is generally securely stored at the Wesley Mission office from which you receive our services or our head office in Sydney or in the case of archived records, at a local external storage facility under a commercial contract with best practice security, retention, destruction and data protection provisions. Wesley Mission uses physical security and other measures to protect personal information from misuse, interference and loss; and from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.
Information held in electronic form is generally held on servers located in Australia either under our direct control or under the control of contracted cloud service providers adhering to best practice data security standards. Wesley Mission uses physical security, password protection and other measures to protect personal information from misuse, interference and loss; and from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.
11. Will your information be disclosed to overseas recipients?
Wesley Mission does not typically or routinely disclose personal information to overseas recipients. We will only disclose your personal information overseas in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles.
Web traffic information collected via Google Analytics (see above for more information) may be stored overseas and some locally based cloud service providers may store back up information in overseas data centres. If our cloud provider stores data offshore, we will ensure that the provider adheres to the Australia Privacy Principles and has comparable security controls in place to house the data offshore.
12. How can you access, correct and update your personal information?
You may request access to the personal information that we hold about you. We note, in some situations, we may be legally permitted to withhold access to your personal information.
To request access to your personal information, please contact Wesley Mission's Privacy Officer in writing using the contact details below. We will not charge a fee for lodging a request for access or for compiling information in response to your request. Proof of identification may be requested by Wesley Mission.
Requests for access must be in writing and should include:
- if the person requesting information is an authorised representative, proof that the person requesting access is lawfully authorised to do so (such as a copy of the Power of Attorney appointing the person as well as a copy of the person's drivers’ licence or passport)
- specific details of the information sought so that we can identify what personal information is being requested; and
- the form in which the information is requested (for example, a copy of the information or a request to view the information contained in our records).
We will generally provide access to personal information in the form requested unless this is unreasonable or impractical, in which case we may provide the information in another way and will do so within 30 days. For example, if providing information may have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals, we may provide only some of the information.
If you believe that any personal information we hold is inaccurate, incomplete, not up to date or misleading, you may request that the information be amended and we must take reasonable steps to correct the information. Please note, in some situations, we may be legally permitted to not correct your personal information.
If we decide not to grant access to personal information or we refuse to correct personal information we will provide you with written reasons for our decision, the mechanisms available to complain and any other matters that we may be legally required to tell you under the Privacy Act.
13. Notifiable Data Breaches
If Wesley Mission determines that personal information has been accessed without permission, acquired, used or disclosed in a manner which compromises the security of the personal information, Wesley Mission will assess the risk to affected parties in accordance with the Privacy Act.
If Wesley Mission determines that a breach would be likely to result in serious harm to an individual, Wesley Mission will notify all affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) in compliance with our Data Breach Response Plan. The notification will provide recommendations about the steps individuals should take in response to the breach.
14. Complaints
If you are not satisfied with our handling of your personal information or you believe we have breached our privacy obligations, you can complain in writing to the Privacy Officer listed below. We will respond to you within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with the handling of our response to your complaint you may also make a complaint to the OAIC by telephone 1300 363 992 or online.
15. Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other party’s websites. We do not have any control over those websites and we are not responsible for the protection and privacy of any personal information which you provide whilst visiting those websites. Those websites are not governed by this Privacy Policy.
16. Amendments
We may, at any time and at our discretion, vary this Privacy Policy by publishing the amended Privacy Policy on our website. We recommend you check our website regularly to ensure you are aware of our current Privacy Policy.
Contacting Wesley Mission
The contact details for Wesley Mission are:
The Privacy Officer
Wesley Mission
PO Box A5555
Sydney South NSW 1235
E: PrivacyOfficer@wesleymission.org.au
P: (02) 9263 5421
Policy last updated 3 February 2025