Privacy Notice

This privacy policy tells you how we collect and process your personal data when you visit our website, or engage our services in accordance with our terms and conditions, UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Throughout this document “we/our” refers to the professionals within our Specialist ARFID Service Ltd and “you/your” refers to the children, young people, parents/carers, adults and professions who are engaging with our services.

Contact Us: The Specialist ARFID Service Ltd (company number: 15727022) is registered to 85 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 7LT and you can contact us by emailing us at admin@arfidservice.com or by writing to our registered address.

What data we collect, use and why:

We collect or use the following information to provide patient care and services, for safeguarding and public protection reasons, to comply with legal requirements and deal with queries, complaints and claims:

Name

Sex assigned at birth

Date of birth

Address

Email addresses

Telephone numbers

Next of kin details for individuals under 18 years old

GP contact details

Where relevant:

Ethnicity

Personal pronouns

Sexual orientation

Religious and cultural beliefs

Names and contact details of other professionals involved

Health information (including details about medical conditions, medications, allergies, medical history, past medical/psychological assessments, copies of relevant clinic letters and reports, weight/growth history and therapy notes)

Information about your care needs (including disabilities, home conditions, dietary requirements, feeding and eating difficulties and general care provisions)

Relevant lifestyle factors

Where do we get personal information from:

Data is collected from:

Directly from you
Family members or carers
Other health and social care providers (with your consent)

Data is collected at the following time points:

Enquiry and referral: data is collected via our website and on completion of a referral form. This is stored to enable us to ascertain the suitability of your referral into the Specialist ARFID Service Ltd.

Assessment: During the assessment process you will be asked to complete pre-assessment screening measures to help us tailor the semi-structured interview process. During the semi-structured interview, we will ask you questions about lots of different aspects of your life to accurately understand the factors contributing and maintaining the difficulties with eating as well as physical, nutritional and psychological risk. This data will enable us to appropriately offer treatment interventions to you. During this process, if information about relatives or other individuals is shared by you, we will presume you have sought consent to share.

Treatment: During treatment we will store therapy notes to enable us to provide ongoing, effective care and in accordance with our insurance requirements. We will also ask for routine outcome measures to be completed during treatment and at the end of treatment which will be stored, to enable us to monitor if treatment is effective.

Professional Consultation/supervision: We will ask that the patient’s identity is protected using a pseudonym. We will not ask for the patient’s personal identifiable information, but we will collect information about the professional services and the presenting difficulties to enable us to provide appropriate support. Brief notes will be stored to enable ongoing supervision.

Without the above data and information, we are unable to provide accurate services.

The lawful basis for processing information and data protection rights:

When you request the services of the Specialist ARFID Service Ltd you are consenting to us collecting your data for the legitimate interest of providing a healthcare service. For more information please see the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) www.ico.org.uk

Under UK data protection law, we must have a “lawful basis” for collecting and using your personal information. There is a list of possible lawful bases in the UK GDPR. You can find out more about lawful bases on the ICO’s website.

Our lawful bases for collecting or using personal information is to provide patient care, services; for safeguarding or public protection reasons; to comply with legal requirements; for dealing with queries, complaints or claims are:

Consent - we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
Contract – we have to collect or use the information so we can enter into or carry out a contract with you. All of your data protection rights may apply except the right to object.

Which lawful basis we rely on may affect your data protection rights which are in brief set out below. You can find out more about your data protection rights and the exemptions which may apply on the ICO’s website:

Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for. You can read more about this right here.
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete. You can read more about this right here.
Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information. You can read more about this right here.
Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information. You can read more about this right here.
Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. You can read more about this right here.
Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you. You can read more about this right here.
Your right to withdraw consent – When we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can read more about this right here.

If you make a request, we must respond to you without undue delay and in any event within one month.

To make a data protection rights request, please contact us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

How do we store your data:

We store all information using technological and organisational methods to keep your information secure and prevent your personal data from being used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal data to those professionals' offering assessment and treatment within our Specialist ARFID Service.

We keep information in accordance with GDPR and in the event of a personal data breach we have in place procedures to ensure that the effects of such a breach are minimised, and we will liaise with you and the ICO as appropriate.

How long we keep information:

s a guide we will retain records for up to 6 years, subject to any legal exception or litigation risk. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect of our relationship to you.

By law we have to keep basic information about you (e.g. identity and financial and transactional data) with regards to the need to fulfil tax and HMRC purposes.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your data so that it can no longer be associated with you but will enable us to use this for research or statistical purposes and for service improvement.

Who has access to my data:

We limit access to your personal data to professionals who are providing assessment and treatment for the Specialist ARFID Service. They will only process your personal data on our instruction and are bound by a duty of confidentiality and their professional code of conduct. Data is only shared on a need-to-know basis within the team to enable multi-disciplinary team working and supervision. All professionals offering assessment and treatment will be a member of a professional body and have had a DBS completed within the last 3 years.

When we may disclose your information:

If we make a referral to another professional: we will always seek your consent to do. We will share information from your assessment and treatment with your consent.

In exceptional circumstances we may need to share your information without consent which includes:

In the event there was a risk of harm to yourself or another: if any information is shared with the Specialist ARFID Service Ltd that raises concern about your safety and wellbeing, including safeguarding concerns, we will need to break confidentiality and disclose personal information to the relevant professionals, e.g. GP, police, social care, mental health crisis teams. Where possible we would be transparent and inform you of this, but if transparency puts you or someone else at increased risk, we would do so without your consent.

When disclosure is in the public interest: if information shared would prevent a miscarriage of justice or where there is a legal duty e.g. police request or via a court order.

Confidentiality:

Clinicians working within the Specialist ARFID Service Ltd will be registered with their relevant professional body and will have had a valid DBS certificate. Clinicians will be required to uphold their professional standards as per their professional body at all times.

Where we have been instructed by you and consent has been given for us to contact professionals outside the Specialist ARFID Service Ltd, we will share information on a need-to-know basis to enable effective care/treatment. All liaison work will incur a fee and we will discuss this with you in advance.

Consent:

The ICO states that in the UK only children aged 13 and over are able to provide their own consent. For any child under this age we will require consent from a parent with parental responsibility for the child. Where there is shared parental responsibility we will only require consent from one parent. For children aged 13 and above, we will seek verbal consent at assessment.

We regularly review and, where necessary, update our privacy information.

The terms that apply to you are those posted her on our website on the day you use our website. If we plan to use personal data for a new purpose, we update our privacy information and will communicate the changes to individuals before starting any new processing.

How to complain:

f you have any concerns about our use of your personal data, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

If you remain unhappy with how we’ve used your data after raising a complaint with us, you can also complain to the ICO.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Website: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

This policy was last updated on 4 October 2024