This policy sets out the circumstances in which information will be gathered, what information Sophie Fisher Family Mediation will collect from you and how that information will be looked after.

 

1. Who is covered by this policy?

This policy covers the following people:

 

• People who mediate with us, and their immediate families 

• People who contact us to explore the possibility of mediating with us 

• People who may be invited to explore the possibility of mediating with us, because someone connected with them has contacted us to explore the possibility of mediating with us

 

2. What information will be collected?

When you make an enquiry regarding mediation we will ask for your name, contact details (email and phone number) and the name of the person you would like to mediate with.

If you decide to proceed with mediation then we will gather additional information, including full contact details for both parties, dates of birth of the parties involved in the mediation, gender, titles and the names and dates of birth of any children and any other information provided during the MIAM or mediation process.  In addition, we may gather sensitive personal information regarding child protection or criminal matters.

 

3. What will we do with the information?

We are ‘processors’ of personal data for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation. Processing (or using) personal data must be for a legitimate purpose - our purposes all relate to mediation, either providing our mediation services to people who have signed our Agreement to Mediate or giving families the opportunity to find out more about family mediation as a way of resolving a family issue. 

 

We will use the information in order to:

• To provide our mediation services to you and to record notes from meetings

• To respond to your requests and enquiries

• To improve our mediation services

• To comply with applicable law(s) for example, to comply with our Legal Aid contract requirements or to carry out professional ethics/conduct investigations

• To enable us to provide and maintain our own accounts and records and to support and manage our employees

We will never sell your personal information to a third party for marketing purposes or commercial gain

 

4. Will this information be shared?

We will treat this information as confidential and will store it securely.  There are certain exceptions where we may share your personal information:

• if we believe that you may be a danger to yourself or others 

• if we believe that a young person under the age of 18 or a vulnerable adult may be at significant risk of harm

• under a legal requirement, eg we believe that you are the recipient of the proceeds of crime

• if ordered by a court of law 

• If you have been referred to our service by a family law professional or the court, we may share with the referrer whether you have attended a statutory Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting (MIAM) and continued into mediation 

• where you consent to us sharing your information with a third party (e.g solicitors, financial advisers, the Court or another professional). 

 

5. Control over your data

You are entitled to access the personal data we hold about you, within one month of our receipt of your request. We will provide a copy of the information free of charge, although we are entitled to ask for a reasonable fee or payment to cover the cost of producing such information when a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, particularly if it is repetitive. We may also charge a reasonable fee to comply with requests for further copies of the same information. In all cases any fee charged will be based on the administrative cost of providing the information. However, if data contains information about another person, such information cannot be provided without that other person’s permission. You are entitled to have inaccurate personal data rectified. You are entitled to have the information deleted (“erased”). The right to have information deleted applies if the personal data is no longer necessary for its original purpose – if you want us to delete your data, that is very likely to mean that mediation isn’t suitable or is no longer possible. Also, you have a limited right to ‘restriction’ of your data within one month of our receipt of your request, which might for example, permit the data to be held on file for complaints or other purposes, but not used in any other way, for example, by sending you an email. Also, you can ask us to give you a copy of your data in a format that allows you to use it elsewhere – data portability – again, within one month of our receipt of your request.

 

6. Cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

 

7. How to Contact Us

The Data Controller is Sophie Fisher Family Mediation, contact details are as follows:

Sophie@Sophiefishermediation.com