1. We respect your privacy
1.1 Very Helpful Chats respects your right to privacy and is committed to safeguarding the privacy of our customers and website visitors. We adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information.​
1.2 "Personal information" is information we hold which is identifiable as being about you.

2. Collection of personal information
2.1 Very Helpful Chats will receive and store personal information and health information you enter onto our website, enter into intake or other forms, and information you provide to us directly through appointments, emails, text messages, phone calls, and when you provide us with letters, reports or emails written by other professionals.
2.2 You may provide basic information such as your name, phone number, address and email address to enable us to send information, provide updates and provide the services. We may collect additional information at other times, including but not limited to: when you provide feedback, when you provide information about your personal or business affairs, change your content or email preference, respond to surveys and/or promotions, provide financial or credit card information, or communicate with our customer support.
2.3 We collect health information and sensitive health information you provide while interacting with us, including your current health background, health records and other health data. Additionally, we may collect other health information and sensitive health information that your doctor or a third party provides to us.

3. How we collect your personal information
3.1 Very Helpful Chats collects personal information from you in a variety of ways, including when you interact with us electronically or in person, when you access our website, when you provide us with information via email, text, phone calls, or intake forms, and when we provide services to you.
3.2 We use Halaxy practice management software to record your personal information and health information. We also take handwritten or typed clinical notes during appointments. We may use transcription services, such as Tactiq, to assist us in accurately documenting and summarising clinical notes. 
3.3 Any communication with you — including emails, SMS, voicemails, and administrative messages — may be recorded as part of your clinical record, in line with our legal and ethical obligations.
3.3 If a partner, family member, or other person contacts us about you without your prior knowledge or consent, we may read or listen to that message in case it relates to safety or risk issues. We will inform you of any such contact. We will not reply or disclose any information about you to them unless we have your consent.
3.5 We collect and process payment information using Halaxy’s secure billing system. Credit and debit card details are stored securely by Halaxy and are not visible to any Very Helpful Chats staff. Halaxy’s privacy and security policies apply to payment processing. You can read more about Halaxy’s card security here: https://blog.halaxy.com/halaxy-card-security-faqs 

4. Use of your personal information
4.1 Very Helpful Chats may use personal and health information collected from you to provide you with health services and treatment.
4.2 We may also use your personal information to send you appointment reminders, service updates, and administrative notices. Occasionally, we may let you know about new or additional services that may be relevant to your needs.
4.3 We may contact you using various methods including telephone, email, SMS, or mail.
4.4 Personal and health information collected from you may be used internally to review clinical practice and support supervision, staff training and quality assurance and service improvement. This may include intake forms, clinical notes,  appointment transcriptions, and reports or letters written by your clinician. These materials may be accessed by your clinician’s clinical supervisor, the clinical lead or the director. All internal access is treated with strict confidentiality and subject to professional and legal privacy standards and any such use of your personal and health information is on a ‘needs to know’ basis and will not be accessed without a relevant clinical purpose.
4.5 To support ethical, safe, and high-quality care, our clinicians regularly participate in regular individual supervision, group supervision, and team-based case reviews. Your personal and health information may be discussed in individual supervision with your clinician’s internal supervisor. In group supervision, only de-identified information is used to support reflective practice and clinical learning.
4.6 For provisional psychologists and students on placement (including occupational therapy or other allied health students), supervision is a registration or placement requirement. If your services are provided by a provisional psychologist or student, your personal and health information will be shared with their internal clinical supervisor. De-identified information may also be shared with an external supervisor. All supervisors — internal and external — are bound by the same strict professional, ethical, and legal privacy obligations.
4.7 If you do not consent to your personal or health information or your de-identified information being shared for supervision or peer consultation, you can let us know in writing at any time. In situations involving risk of harm, we may need to share relevant information with supervisors or other professionals — even without your prior consent — to ensure safety. These decisions are guided by professional ethics and legal obligations. 

5. Disclosure of your personal information
5.1 We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, including our administrative and management staff, as well as to external people and organisations, including subcontractors, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers or debt collectors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy. Any information disclosed to another individual or organisation is provided on a 'needs to know' basis related to a clinical or administrative reason. We will not disclose information to any other party that is not required for clinical or administrative reasons.
5.2 Personal information is only supplied to a third party when it is required to deliver our services, including to other health professionals looking after your care, to comply with our legal and ethical obligations, or to collect debts owed to us.
5.3 We will seek your written consent before disclosing your personal or health information to any other individual or organization.
5.4 For clients referred by their General Practitioner (GP) under a Medicare Mental Health Treatment Plan (MHTP), we are required under Medicare rules to provide a summary of your treatment to your GP after the 6th session, 10th session and 20th session, or at the conclusion of your treatment. By providing us with your GP referral and MHTP, you consent to this disclosure.
5.5 For clients referred by their General Practitioner (GP) under a DVA Allied Health Treatment Cycle Referral, we are required under DVA rules to provide an ‘end of cycle report’ to your GP after every 12th session, or at the conclusion of your treatment. By providing us with your GP referral, you consent to this disclosure.
5.6 If you invite your partner or other family member into an appointment or consultation, we will usually accept your verbal consent to disclose some of your personal and health information to this person where relevant to the conversation. We may refuse to disclose information to your partner or other family member if we are concerned for your safety or welfare.
5.7 We may from time to time need to disclose personal information to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, in the course of a legal proceeding or in response to a law enforcement agency request.
5.8 The following exceptions mean that we will disclose your personal information and health information to another individual or organization, even if you do not consent. This may happen where:
          (a) Disclosure of your information is required or authorized under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order. For example, when we receive a valid subpoena requiring us to submit your client records to a federal, state, district or local court. There are some occasions where we can object to a valid subpoena; we may contact you to discuss this.
          (b) Disclosure of your information is required to make a mandatory report about a child or young person that we reasonably believe is at significant risk of harm, and, to consult with child protection professionals about this.
          (c) Disclosure of your information to emergency services or law enforcement agencies (state or federal) is required to lessen or prevent a serious threat to life, health, or safety of any individual, or to lessen or prevent a serious threat to life, health or safety of the general public. The threat does not have to be immediate or specific for us to disclose your information under this exception.
          (d) Disclosure of your information is required to inform law enforcement agencies of your knowledge about a ‘serious crime’ committed by you or any other individual. The definition of ‘serious crime’ is the same as used in the NSW Crime Act 1900 as an offence attracting five or more years’ incarceration.
          (e) Disclosure of your information to inform a federal or state agency (for example, AHPRA or Health Care Complaints Commission) if a registered or unregistered health practitioner is placing the public at substantial risk of harm. Health practitioners who seek mental health treatment, or who have a mental health impairment of any severity, will not be reported to AHPRA or similar regulatory body in the absence of substantial risk to the public. This is a very high threshold to meet. This is so health practitioners have the confidence to seek and have mental health treatment without fearing mandatory notification. 
5.9 Information that we collect may from time to time be stored, processed in or transferred between parties located in countries outside of Australia.
5.10 If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, we reserve the right to transfer to the extent permissible at law our user databases, together with any personal information and non-personal information contained in those databases. This information may be disclosed to a potential purchaser under an agreement to maintain confidentiality. We would seek to only disclose information in good faith and where required by any of the above circumstances.
5.11 By providing us with personal information, you consent to the terms of this Privacy Policy and the types of disclosure covered by this Policy. Where we disclose your personal information to third parties, we will request that the third party follow this Policy regarding handling your personal information.
 
6. Security of your personal information
6.1 Very Helpful Chats is committed to ensuring that the information you provide to us is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have implemented suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.
6.2 The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to us or receive from us. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that the personal or sensitive health information we collect will not be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.
 
7. Access to your personal information
7.1  You may request details of personal information that we hold about you in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). A small administrative fee may be payable for the provision of information.
7.2 You can ask for corrections if you believe any information we hold about you is inaccurate, outdated, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading. Please email us at admin@veryhelpfulchats.com.au 
7.3 We reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information that we hold about you, in certain circumstances set out in the Privacy Act.
 
8. Complaints about privacy
8.1 If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to send details of your complaints to Very Helpful Chats by e-mail to admin@veryhelpfulchats.com.au. We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving written notice of your complaint
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9. Changes to Privacy Policy
9.1 Please be aware that we may change this Privacy Policy in the future. We may modify this Policy at any time, in our sole discretion and all modifications will be effective immediately upon our posting of the modifications on our website or notice board. Please check back from time to time to review our Privacy Policy.
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10. Website
10.1 When you visit our website www.veyhelpfulchats.com.au we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, website visited immediately before coming to our site, etc. This information is used in an aggregated manner to analyse how people use our site, such that we can improve our service.
10.2  Cookies. We may from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Cookies are not malicious programs that access or damage your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website. Our website may from time to time use cookies to analyses website traffic and help us provide a better website visitor experience. In addition, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third party services such as Google Adwords. These ads may appear on this website or other websites you visit.
10.3 Third party sites. Our site may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that Very Helpful Chats is not responsible for the privacy practices of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personal identifiable information