For free & confidential support or advice call 028 9066 6049, email support@belfastwomensaid.org.uk or use our webchat service. Call, email or chat online for support Mon to Fri 9am–5pm; evening support available until 8pm on Thursdays.
The Domestic and Sexual Abuse Helpline is available 24/7 on 0808 802 1414
Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid provides support, information and temporary accommodation to women with or without children who are experiencing domestic violence. This support is provided in refuges, through the Outreach service, the PSNI Support Workers and the children and young person’s projects.
During your period of support with Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid, we will ask you to provide us with personal data. Personal data is information that relates to a living individual who can be identified from the information.
The personal data we collect includes:
All of this information is provided by you (and/or whoever referred you to the organisation) when you are initially referred and when your support starts. You have the right to withhold or restrict any information relating to you or your children, and this will be respected although there may be occasions when this will restrict the support we can provide. You also can amend your information if it changes and you have the right to request to have all the information we keep relating to support for you and your children, deleted from our records (although in some circumstances we will not be able to do this).
The organisation also uses CCTV cameras for security purposes at the refuges and the Support and Resource Centre. Images are not recorded and kept in refuge, but are recorded and kept for two weeks in the Support and Resource centre.
When we ask you for personal data, we promise to:
Your information is stored securely on a computer database, and on paper files. The organisation has a Data Protection Policy which outlines how we will store and process your information within the organisation to keep it safe.
When you and your child or children are using our services we are at times required to share your information with others. This might be with the agency that referred you to Women’s Aid, or perhaps your Social Worker if you have one. When you leave refuge or finish using the Outreach service, again we may be asked to share some of your information with relevant agencies as part of your move on support. If you do not want us to do that please make that clear to your support worker before you leave our services.
Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid is dependent on financial funding from external bodies. Funders ask us to provide them with information relating to the work we do, and so we are required to pass on some specific information. This includes:
Other agencies that we may share information with as part of your support may include:
All these organisations are obliged to keep your details securely and to dispose of them when no longer needed.
In certain other circumstances, the organisation has a statutory or legal requirement to pass on information, for example in legal or child protection cases.
You are entitled to see your information at any time during your support and to have a copy of your support plan when you leave Women’s Aid services. Your paper file will be shredded one year after your support finishes and the database record after 7 years. We keep information for that length of time to meet funder’s requirements or should there be a legal requirement. After you have left the services you are entitled to make a Data Subject Access Request to obtain a copy of your information. To do this you should write to the Data Protection Officer, 30 Adelaide Park, Belfast,
BT9 6FY.
The collection, processing and recording of your information will be in line with the
General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 2016.
If you have any concerns or questions about how we collect, handle or share your information or you wish to make a complaint in this respect you can contact the Data Protection Officer on 028 9066 6049 or talk to your support worker.