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Confidentiality Policy

Confidentiality is very important to ASA.  All staff and volunteers keep to the following confidentiality policy:

Information you give your advocate is confidential within ASA.  This means that your advocate will only discuss information you have given with another advocate or with their supervisor.

Any records or documents we have about you will be kept for five years from our last contact with you before being destroyed unless you ask us to keep them for longer.  We promise to keep your records in a locked cabinet.

If your contact with us lasts for longer than five years, we will review your file annually with you and remove any information you believe to be inaccurate or irrelevant.

Your advocate will not discuss you or the information you have given with anyone outside ASA unless you have given them permission to do so.

If we see you outside an advocacy setting, in order to protect your confidentiality, we will not acknowledge you unless you acknowledge us first.

We will not keep any information you give us about a third party or from a third party unless it is essential to your case.  A decision about how this is done will be made between you and your advocate.  Where ASA thinks it is necessary to keep some of this information, then your advocate will sit down with you to decide the most appropriate means of doing this.  You will be asked to indicate your agreement to this by signing a consent form.

There are exceptions to our confidentiality policy.

If we think that you or another person is at serious risk or you give us information about a crime, we may have to pass this on to other people.  We would normally tell you before we do this and we will provide you with reasons in writing for our action.