Collecting and using your information

Abuse in Care has powers under section 20 of the Inquiries Act 2013 to collect information appropriate for the purposes of the inquiry. This means we can require any person to produce documents and provide information necessary for Abuse in Care to identify, examine, and report on the matters in scope.

The matters in scope include:

  • Why people were taken into care – including if there was bias, discrimination or bad decision-making by agencies.
  • What abuse and neglect occurred - what took place and to what extent?
  • Why it happened – what made it possible for abuse and neglect to happen to people?
  • What effects this had – on the person abused, their family/whānau and others. This includes long-term effects and effects on future generations.
  • What was learned – what changes were made over the years in response to abuse and neglect, including to laws, rules, and efforts to monitor places where care is provided?
  • How well the systems are working now – including current redress and rehabilitation processes.
  • How things can be done better in the future.

We collect information from you when you:

  • register your expression of interest
  • talk to us over the phone
  • meet with us
  • provide us with documents and evidence in any form
  • provide us with feedback, comments or make submissions to us online, for example, through our Social Pinpoint page.

Sharing your information

We only share your personal information in accordance with the Terms of Reference, and as allowed by our powers under section 20 of the Inquiries Act. In any inquiry reports or publications, we will make sure that your information is anonymised so that you cannot be identified from it.

Sometimes we need to share personal information with organisations that we contract to:

  • find potential witnesses to provide evidence to the Commission
  • transcribe information from private sessions
  • analyse information using research tools in order to produce the inquiry reports
  • provide software to organise evidence that we use in our hearings
  • provide us with feedback, comments or make submissions to us online, for example, through our Social Pinpoint page

We also ensure that any organisations we contract with have robust security practices and limited access to the personal information.  With your explicit consent, we may share your personal information with support organisations such as Homecare Medical or the Police if you require wellbeing support or assistance.

When you engage with us through our Social Pinpoint page, you should know that any information you share can be read, collected or used by others. You should use caution in disclosing personal information when participating in submissions.

Securing your information

We will respect your information and keep it safe. We know your information is very important and take our responsibilities seriously. Our staff are trained in the appropriate use of information and are aware of how to keep information your information confidential.

We have systems and safeguards in place to control how we collect, manage and use your information. This helps us use your information appropriately and keep it safe.

Our systems are secure and only people that need to use your personal information will have access to it. This includes digital, electronic and physical (hard copy) information. 

All information generated by Abuse in Care are public records and will be managed under the provisions of the Public Records Act 2005. Once the Abuse in Care inquiry is completed, the Chief Archivist will instruct us on the archiving process required. Part of the archival process includes appropriate restrictions as to the management of personal information.

When your information is provided through Social Pinpoint, that information is stored and processed on secure servers located in Australia using Amazon Web Services.  We take reasonable steps to ensure that your information is kept safe and secure.

Accessing and correcting your personal information

If you have any concerns and wish to access or amend any of the personal information you provided to Abuse in Care, please contact us.

Privacy while using this website

This website can be viewed and its web feeds (once available) can be subscribed to without the need to disclose any personal information to us.

You may decide to provide identifying information when:

  • subscribing to site updates by email (when available)
  • seeking information from or via the site
  • registering with Abuse in Care
  • providing feedback to us

Personal information that you provide will be held by Abuse in Care.  We will only use personal information provided to communicate with users of the website, including those wishing to participate in Abuse in Care.

We use Google Analytics to collect statistical information about your visit to help us analyse usage of, and improve, the website. This information includes:

  • users' IP addresses
  • users' search terms
  • pages accessed on the site
  • links that are clicked on
  • date and time of site visits
  • previous visited site
  • users' operating systems
  • browsers used when accessing the site.

The website generates persistent cookies for all visitors for the purpose of collecting the statistical information referred to above. The cookies, which can be found on your computer, are named __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz.

Our website has links to our Abuse in Care Facebook page. Facebook has its own privacy policy and may track your use of our website through persistent session cookies if you are logged in to Facebook while using our site.

Our site uses Adroll to help us recognize your device and understand how you use our site. This information helps us to improve what we provide so we can:

  • reflect your interests when we serve you information about the Inquiry, and
  • measure and analyse the performance of our engagement.

Email newsletters

We now use MailChimp, an online marketing platform to send our newsletter, Pānui. In the future we may use Mailchimp to send out other newsletters or emails to people on our mailing list. Mailchimp’s servers are based in the U.S.A, so if you are on our mailing list your information may be disclosed or used in other countries in accordance with Mailchimp’s Privacy policy.

Sending the newsletter through Mailchimp gives more safeguards against accidental privacy breaches than sending the newsletter out by standard email, and lets us see how people are reading the newsletters using tools offered by Mailchimp.

Mailchimp shows:

  • Open rates - how many and which subscribers have opened the newsletter
  • Click rates - how many and which subscribers clicked hyperlinks in the newsletter

There is no ability to track subscribers outside of a specific newsletter. Once the recipient has closed the newsletter, no further information can be collected. When you unsubscribe to our newsletter, your details will be deleted from the database.

Questions and Support

If you have a question about the information we hold, or a concern about how we've handled your information, you can contact us.

Download the Word document version of this policy.