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Whaikaha Ministry of Disabled People View our
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Privacy notice

This is the privacy notice for Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People.

It lets you know how we collect, use, and share your personal information to meet the requirements with the:

Personal information means information about an identifiable individual such as their name, contact details, income, or employment details and can include their health and disability information if it identifies an individual.

Collection of Information

You may browse and access information contained within this website without providing personal information. When your personal information is obtained Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People is committed to making sure your privacy is protected.

Receiving services through our providers

Most of the services Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People funds are accessed through a Needs Assessment and Service Co-ordination service (known as a ‘NASC’). NASCs allocate Ministry-funded support services and assist with accessing other supports for disabled people. We also support Enabling Good Lives sites (known as ‘EGL sites’) to provide services to disabled people.

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People contracts disability information advisory services to provide independent information and advice to disabled people, their whānau/families, aiga, caregivers, providers and the general public.

When you deal with Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People and our providers, we collect your health information so we can:

  • contact you
  • identify you
  • work out how to help you, and
  • look at what other services might help you.

There is certain information these agencies need to be able to provide a service. You can choose not to provide this information, but it may mean you miss out on receiving disability support.

When you contact us

Where you voluntarily provide personal information to Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People (e.g. through online forms, newsletter subscriptions or email requests) we will only use your personal information for the purposes for which you gave it to us. This information will be held by us.

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People will hold your personal and health information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

We also take care to meet our obligations with Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission's Information Gathering and Public Trust Model Standards external URL .

Using your information

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People uses your health information to:

  • make decisions about services to provide you
  • fund services provided to you
  • respond to your queries and feedback.

We may also use information we collect in a de-identified form to look at how we operate and design new services or tools.

Sharing your information

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People sometimes needs to share your information with people or organisations outside of Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People itself. This will primarily be with other health providers and organisations such as the Ministry of Health, Health NZ, and the Māori Health Authority.     

When we do this, we will always abide by the Privacy Act 2020 and Health Information Privacy Code 2020. This means that we will only share your information when:

  • our reason for sharing matches the reason we collected it
  • we have a specific legal reason
  • you give us permission to share it.

We may also enter into information matching or sharing agreements with other New Zealand government agencies. When we do this we will make available summaries of these agreements for you to read on our website.

We may disclose information to report misconduct, breach of duty, or where there is a serious threat to health or safety. If our staff are threatened or abused, we may refer the matter to the Police and disclose relevant information.

Security of your information

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People is committed to keeping your information secure. We know that health information needs special protections and we will take all reasonable steps to ensure it is safe and secure.  

We have systems and safeguards in place to control how we collect, manage and use your information. Our systems are secure and only people that need to use your personal information will have access to it. This includes when we store your information electronically in cloud computing systems.

Managing your information

Accessing your information

You have a right to request access to or correction of your personal and health information held by Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People.

You can do this by contacting us at: privacy@whaikaha.govt.nz.

You can request your information from us under the Privacy Act 2020.

We will follow the processes outlined in the Privacy Act 2020 to manage and respond to your requests.

Ensuring your information is accurate

We take reasonable efforts to ensure that the personal information we collect, use or disclose is accurate. Whenever you provide information, either directly or indirectly, we take reasonable efforts to ensure our records are updated.

You should let us know of any change in your circumstances such as a change of address.

Retention of your information

We will keep your personal information for as long as necessary to achieve the purpose for which we collected it.

Complaints

You can also make a complaint. You can do this yourself or you can get a support person such as a family member, friend or social worker to make a complaint on your behalf.

If you would like to make a complaint about how Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People has handled your personal information you must:  

The Privacy Commissioner

If you are not satisfied with our response to your privacy complaint you can contact the Privacy Commissioner:

Privacy when using this website

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People collects statistical information about your visit to our website to help us improve it. This information does not identify individuals. The statistical information will only be viewable by website administrators.

This website uses cookies for the purpose of monitoring website usage. A cookie is a piece of code that creates a file on your computer to track the pages that you visit. The cookies do not collect personal information. You can disable them or clear them out of your web browser without affecting your ability to use the website.

Google Analytics

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People uses Google Universal Analytics to collect and analyse details about the use of our website. No effort is made to identify individual visitors.

The information Google Analytics collects includes:

  • your IP address
  • the search terms you used
  • the pages you accessed on the website and the links you clicked on
  • the date and time you visited the website
  • the referring website (if any) through which you clicked through to this website
  • your operating system (e.g., Windows XP, Mac OSX)
  • the type of web browser you use (e.g., Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox), and
  • other incidental matters such as screen resolution and the language setting of your browser.

You may opt-out from having Google Analytics collect your information by disabling cookies in your browser, or by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out browser add-on external URL . Read Google Analytics Safeguarding your data external URL for more details.

Newsletter subscriptions

When you subscribe to newsletters from Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People we will only use your personal information for managing your subscription and assessing newsletter effectiveness. You can unsubscribe from any newsletter at any time.

Our newsletters are managed using a third-party tool called Campaign Monitor. Campaign Monitor provides analytics to Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People on how people interact with our newsletters (e.g. how many subscribers have opened emails or clicked on links). This means that Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People and Campaign Monitor will be able to see your name, email and details about which links in Ministry newsletters you have clicked on.   

Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People only uses this information to assess newsletter effectiveness.

For more information go to the Campaign Monitor Terms of Use external URL .