Disclaimer and Your Privacy

Disclaimer and Privacy Policy

It is very important that you read and understand the following disclaimer before using our services or taking part in any of our community areas. It helps to protect both you and our service. It also helps you to understand what happens to your information and this is one of your rights as a health service user.

Social Media and Online Communications policy

We take our responsibility to consider all of our communications with people very seriously. We have developed the following Policy Document here

Funding Diabetes Counselling Online

This service was self funded from 2001 – 2004 by our Founder, Helen Edwards.

It was then partially funded under the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS) administered by Diabetes Australia Ltd from 2004 – 2009. We have been solely supported by volunteers, fundraising, donations, sponsors and grants from 2009 – 2012.

In 2012 Helen Edwards was won a 3 year grant with the Commonwealth Department for Health and Ageing which we gratefully acknowledge. This ended on 30 June 2015. As of this date we are no longer offering 1-1 counselling via email. You can however get support in our Facebook groups which are still managed by voluntary health care professionals and peer support people, who all live with diabetes. Private consults available here

Medical advice

Diabetes Counselling Online Inc does not give personal medical advice. Information on this site should not be used for diagnosing or treating diabetes. Nor should information found here take the place of the advice of your doctor or medical team. Always see your diabetes specialist if you have concerns about your diabetes care.

Links to information about the medical aspects of diabetes can be found here, but Diabetes Counselling Online Inc takes no responsibility for any information obtained via any link. Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and any person involved with providing this service takes no responsibility for any advice provided by another member of the public in discussions held in forums and chat rooms. It is up to you to make your own decisions about such information provided in these forums.

Disclosure

Diabetes Counselling Online may from time to time display advertising to support our free services.

We may display links, logos and information about partner organisations; sponsors and supporters.

We will never promote one particular product over another, but rather provide information about all options for management of diabetes and wellbeing – with it being up to the consumer as to their choices. The fact that one company may sponsor us does not necessarily suggest their products to be superior.

“Friendly” links, or partner organisations are provided for the use of consumers in seeking other resources and avenues of support. These are not advertisements.

Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility for any advice or posts given on the discussion forums, chat rooms, or other social media pages, by the public and by our members, either in regards to diabetes management, or any other issue or concern.

  • We will not tolerate any defamatory postings which identify diabetes health care professionals or any other individual and we will delete any such posts.
  • Contact between people via the Facebook Groups or blog is your own responsibility and Diabetes Counselling Online Inc takes no responsibility for the communication between people, or actions of others in these areas of the website or social media.
  • Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility whatsoever for any information found on other websites accessed via the links and resources page.
  • Please be aware that this is a service for Australian residents, operating under Australian law only. Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility for providing services to any overseas visitors.
  • Individual medical advice is not provided – you should always consult your doctor in the first instance in the case of medical problems or queries.
  • We will never make changes to the medical management of your diabetes. We can provide general information about diabetes and its management only.
  • Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility for any medical advice sought or given by any other member or source located via any area of this website.
  • It is a given that you have read this disclaimer and privacy policy prior to entering into any personal counselling or group via this website.
  • Counselling is undertaken at your own risk and it is your personal responsibility to ensure privacy at your end of the communication with our team.
  • Diabetes Counselling Online Inc and its representatives take no responsibility for “lost” emails; emails filed by your own virus protection or SPAM software; or any other event that means an email does not arrive to your inbox, or back to ours. We expect that you will follow up with us if you have not heard a response within a week.
  • Personal information shared via email counselling is undertaken at your own risk and you need to be aware of the often open nature of internet communications.
  • Please protect your own privacy and safety. We suggest that sensitive information is not shared or stored on any public computer, especially where other people have access to this.

Privacy policy and what happens to your information at Diabetes Counselling Online

This privacy policy is based on the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s National Principles for the Fair Handling of Personal Information.http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html

Diabetes Counselling Online Inc is a not for profit charitable organisation. Helen Edwards is the Director and Public Officer for the charity. A number of voluntary part time counsellors, diabetes educators, peer supporters and a dietitian are also contracted to deliver volunteer services and we are managed by a Board of Directors.

As a health service we are required to keep proper records of the services, processes and research undertaken to complete the services. Diabetes Counselling Online and our contractors will use personal information only for the purposes of providing the service and must take all reasonable measures to ensure personal information is protected against loss, or unauthorised access under the provision of the Privacy Act 1988.

If you have comments or questions regarding this privacy statement, please contact [email protected]

What happens to your information?

All emails sent to the service from the wesbite forms, or directly, are received by the Director at the head office computer via [email protected]

Nobody else will see this information, unless you provide permission to share this with another person for supervision or education purposes.

We will then keep a copy of your conversations either on an electronic system such as a hard drive or memory stick, or in a paper file; and then keep these in secure storage for ongoing work, statistics and record keeping as required by law.

Storage of personal information

We need to keep hard copies or electronic copies of all emails as “case notes” for our private, professional use in ongoing counselling and education. These are shared between the Director and our team from time to time. Legally we are required to keep these “case note” documents for 7 years.

Personal information

Diabetes Counselling Online Inc will never use your private details without first consulting you. We might use parts of a person’s story with no identifying information for research, writing articles for journals, or presentation to health professionals. We might also need to discuss aperson’s situation with a supervisor or a colleague. However we would never use any identifying information in such discussions without first asking you and in fact in most instances would ask for your permission prior to even discussing your story with someone else.

We would never share personal details or email addresses with a third party without the request of the person.

How much information do you need to share?

It is always up to you how much personal information you provide to the service, but we will need at least an email address in order to reply to you. In some cases having an emergency contact and details of your usual doctor can be important. Other identifying information might be needed such as a telephone number if we are going to chat on the phone. The more you can tell us about yourself and the problems, the better. We can discuss this if you are not comfortable sharing such information.

Home addresses are often not necessary, but the region in which you live is helpful for us in situating you in your environment and linking you with other services. It is also helpful for us to see where people are coming from in terms of research and evaluation.

Email addresses or mailing addresses which you provide to Diabetes Counselling Online Inc are never, under any circumstance, provided to another organisation, group, company or individual, or used for any purpose other than that by which you provided your details to us originally.

Blog, Social Media and Stories Pages

Please remember that any information you directly post at the Blog and our Facebook Groups are publicly accessible, so please consider your own wishes around disclosure carefully before posting any identifying or personal details. You can modify and delete your own posts.

Information you share is at your own discretion and will often occur without our involvement at the time.

The “Your Stories” page is a public area. We recommend not adding identifying details on your story and we will never publish a person’s identifying details with their story on that page, unless they specifically request this.

Access to personal information and data quality

Wherever possible, we can provide you with access to the personal information that we may hold about you. In most cases it will be exactly the same as you have, as most contacts are via email and you can print out hard copies.

email [email protected] and we can send that on to you via ordinary or “snail” mail.

We will take all reasonable steps to keep all information we hold up-to-date. If you identify that the information that we hold about you is incorrect, please contact us and request an amendment.

If you require clarification of this privacy policy or practices at any time please contact [email protected]