Privacy and Who I am
Privacy of personal information is an important principle to Pat Shelenko (me). I am committed to collecting, using, and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the services I provide. I strive to be open and transparent regarding how your personal information is managed. This document describes my privacy policies. The best way to contact me is via e-mail at pat@patshelenko.ca. My website address is: https://patshelenko.ca. I am a team of one Social Worker who is registered with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers and as such, I follow their record keeping and information collection rules and their requirement of confidentiality.
Requirement of Confidentiality and Privacy
In accordance with Ontario’s PHIPA (Personal Health Information Act) and the Federal PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), I handle sensitive personal client information in a confidential and appropriate manner. I take all reasonable precautions to safeguard the confidentiality of such information (e.g., ensuring confidential material is stored on secure Canadian based servers; using a web-based platform with end-to-end encryption for provision of services, always using a secure internet connection, shielding computer screens with confidential information from unauthorized viewing). I have chosen to use NousTalk as my platform because they are a Canadian company who stores data securely on their servers at their data centre located in Montreal. They are PIPEDA and PHIPA compliant. This platform uses 128-bit encrypted live online audio video (Web-RTC) connection.
What is Personal Information and Why is it Collected?
Personal information is information about an identifiable individual. Personal information includes information that relates to: an individual’s personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, income, home address or phone number, ethnic background, family status); health (e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received by them); or, activities and views (e.g., religion, politics, opinions expressed by an individual, an opinion or evaluation of an individual).
I collect and use personal information about my clients to:
- Provide quality treatment plans and services to clients.
- Provide information to other people or organizations with client consent (for example, making a referral for service).
- Review client files to ensure high quality of service and documentation.
- I may also collect, use, and share personal information with consent or as permitted or required by law or contract. (For this and other questions, please refer to Frequently Asked Questions.)
Analytics
Analytics looks at marketing this website, which measures things like what are people looking at, searching for, and how are they responding to the content of this site. This information is only used by me and my web-designers to develop the site as needed to promote my practice, no private or personal information is used.
Who I share your data with…
Data collected on this website is used only by me. I do not sell that information to a third party nor do I allow a third party to access it. As for your file and health information, this is stored securely in Montreal based services.
How long I retain your data
I retain your records as required by the OCSWSSW. This is seven years, after that time, your records will be permanently deleted from the servers.
Client Access to and Correction of Personal Information
- Clients wishing to review their records or wish an explanation of their records may contact me in writing (via e-mail).
- Within 30 days of any such request, an appointment will be made for the client to review his/her personal information in a confidential manner through ‘Screen Share’ process available through NousTalk during a counselling session. Clients may invite a support person to this appointment if they wish.
- I am required to retain client personal information that is the subject of a request for access for as long as necessary to allow the client to exhaust any recourse under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 that he or she may have with respect to the request.
- Clients will not be permitted to access third party records without the consent of the third party. In such cases, I will direct the client to obtain the requested information directly from the third party.
- Clients wishing to correct information in their file shall discuss the correction and the correction will be included in the client’s record and, as part of the conversation. The client will be able to see the correction as it is done (through the secure screen share on NousTalk).
- In instances where clients request a copy of their record, they will be required to sign a form acknowledging that I retain no responsibility for the record once it is released.
Additional Privacy information for the blogs…
This part of my website works with cookies, and has an opportunity to post comments, so if you are visiting the site because of this information, then this part of the Privacy Policy applies to you.
I only collect information from visitors to this site in order to monitor how I might make changes to make it more accessible. If you decide to make a comment in the ‘Ant-oppressive Practice’ section then I will be keeping track to ensure that a level of polite cordiality is maintained.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site, I collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
Analytics
Analytics looks at marketing this website, which measures things like what are people looking at and how are they responding to the content of this site. This information is only used by me and my web-designers to develop the site as needed to promote my practice.
Who I share your data with…
Data collected on this website is used only by me. I do not sell that information to a third party nor do I allow a third party to access it.
How long I retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
What rights you have over your data
If you have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where I send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.