Privacy Notice

Website enquirers’ privacy notice

This privacy notice sets out how Fostering First Ireland (FFI) uses and protects any personal information that you give FFI when you use this website. FFI is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

This website is intended for adults and we do not knowingly collect information relating to children through this website.

FFI is the controller and responsible for your personal information. If you want to contact us, please email us at contactus@ffi.ie or phone 01 417 1944 or write to Fostering First Ireland, Grantham House, Grantham Street, Dublin 8.

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer, Aaleen Zahra, who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice.  If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the Data Protection Officer by emailing DPO@keyassets.org.

FFI may change this privacy notice from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This privacy notice is effective from 25th May 2018.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current.  Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.

What we collect

We may collect the following information:

• name and job title;
• contact information including email address;
• demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests; and
• other information, subject to it being demonstrated as being of relevance to the exercise.

If you are registering your interest in our company but do not provide us with relevant and accurate contact details, this will affect our ability to contact you in order to progress your enquiry.

Purposes for which we will use your personal information

We have set out below a description of the ways we plan to use your personal information:

• To register your enquiry and interest, and arrange a response to you.
• To manage our relationship with you.
• To deliver relevant website content.
• To administer this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data).
• To carry out market research.
• To improve our website, products/services, customer relationships and experiences.

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.

If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

How we use your personal information

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to.  Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to take steps to enter a potential contract with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We may process your personal information for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your information.

Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests to use your personal information, we have listed below what our legitimate interests are:

• Tracking your progress to becoming an approved Foster Carer.
• Progressing your relationship with FFI.
• Maintaining internal records.
• Understanding how best to develop our services.
• Researching behaviours and motivations in the journey to becoming an approved Foster Carer.
• Keeping our website updated and relevant.

You will receive communications from us as part of your enquiry, although you can opt out of receiving these at any time by contacting us.

Disclosures of your personal information

We may need to share your personal information with certain parties for the purposes set out above.  We have listed those third parties as follows:

• Other companies in our group for reasons such as IT and system administration services as well as reporting activities.
• Service providers who support our website or supply IT and system administration services.
• Partnering organisations or other entities which assist us to provide or improve our services (for example, by analysing and modelling statistics/data).
• Regulators, An Garda Siochana, government bodies or to otherwise comply with the law.

We require all third party service providers and other entities in the group to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law.  We do not allow our third party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes.  We only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Information security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.  In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.  They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Retention of your personal information

Unless we notify you otherwise in writing, we will hold your personal information based on the following criteria:

• For as long as is reasonable, such as progressing your journey to becoming an approved Foster Carer or managing our relationship with you;
• For as long as is needed to defend a legal claim against us; and
• Retention periods in line with legal and regulatory requirements or guidance.

Your rights in connection with personal information

We have detailed below a list of the rights that you have under data protection laws.  They do not apply in all circumstances and we will explain in writing whether or not they do, at the time you wish to exercise any of these rights.

• The right to be informed about the processing of your personal information.
• The right to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed.
• The right to object to processing of your personal information.
• The right to restrict processing of your personal information.
• The right to have your personal information erased (the “right to be forgotten”).
• The right to request access to your personal information and to obtain information about how we process it.
• The right to request the transfer of your personal information to another party (“data portability”).

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please email us at contactus@ffi.ie or phone 01 417 1944 or write to Fostering First Ireland, Grantham House, Grantham Street, Dublin 8.

You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Data Protection Commissioner, the supervisory authority for data protection issues in the Republic of Ireland (www.dataprotection.ie).  We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the Commissioner so please contact us in the first instance.

How we use cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We may use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest easily. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy notice. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy notice applicable to the website in question.

Other privacy information

This privacy notice supplements the following notices and is not intended to override them:

To read our full Privacy Notice if you are in the process of becoming a foster carer, please click here.

To read our full Privacy Notice if you are an approved foster carer, click here.

To read our full Privacy Notice if you are in the process of applying for a job with FFI, please click here.