Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP) is committed to protecting your personal data. We want the women and families who come to us for support, and those who support us by volunteering or donating, to be clear about how we use and look after any personal information that they share with us. We will only use the information that we collect about you lawfully and transparently, and will treat it with care and respect. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you). The policy also explains the rights of anyone whose personal data we hold.

We hope that this policy will answer any questions you may have, but please do contact us if you require further information; either by email to app@app-network.org or by post or telephone using the contact details you can find on our website here.

APP’s Privacy Policy may change, so please remember to check back from time to time, this is version 4.3 and was last updated on the 14th July 2023. Where we have made any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will make this clear on our website or contact you about any changes.

1. Who we are

Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP) is the UK charity dedicated to supporting women and families affected by Postpartum Psychosis. We are committed to protecting your personal data and making every effort to ensure that it is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner. We are a "data controller" for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

2. How we collect information about you

We collect information from you in the following ways:

When you interact with us directly: if you come to us for peer support or information about postpartum psychosis, when you register for or participate in training or an event, when you take part in surveys or research, when you make a donation to us, join the APP network, apply for a job or to become a volunteer or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you meet our employees or volunteers at an event, phone us, visit our website, email or write to us.

When you interact with us through third parties: for example, if you donate to us through a third party such as Just Giving or CAF and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.

When you visit our website: for example, if you fill in one of the forms on our website. For information about how we use cookies see section 10 below.

3. What information we collect and why we use it

Personal Information
The personal information we collect may include your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number.  If you are making a donation, personal information may include other information you provide in any communications between us or with third party fundraising websites.  If you work or volunteer for APP, the personal information we collect may include your payment details.

We will mainly use this information:

  • To provide peer support services and to share information about postpartum psychosis with you.
  • To process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
  • To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, training/events or services you have requested.
  • To comply with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and follow the recommendations of the official regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, which require us to identify and verify the identity of supporters who make major gifts so we can assess any risks associated with accepting their donations.
  • To keep a record of your relationship with us.
  • Where you volunteer with us, to administer the volunteering arrangement.
  • To invite you to participate in research to better understand Postpartum Psychosis or to evaluate our services.

If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your donation or provide services you have requested.

We may also use your personal information to contact you about our work and how you can support APP (see section 8 on 'Marketing' below for further information).

Sensitive Personal Information
Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive. Sensitive Personal Information can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

If you share your personal experience of postpartum psychosis and related mental illness, or that of a partner, friend or relative, we may also collect this health information.

If you contact APP for peer support or information about postpartum psychosis, or in other more general communications with us such as blogs or emails, you may choose to provide details of a sensitive nature.

We will only use this information:

  • For the purposes of providing peer support, dealing with your enquiry, training, quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.
  • To make you aware of opportunities to participate in research studies.  If you chose to participate in research, you would be given further information about the research and asked to sign a consent form.
  • When you volunteer for APP, to match you to volunteering opportunities.
  • Where you have become one of our volunteer Experts by Experience, with your consent we may share your name and contact details with event organisers for the purpose of facilitating your attendance.
  • Where you have become one of our media volunteers, with your consent we may share your name and contact details with journalists.
  • Where you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us (for example, by submitting your story to be published on our personal experiences website page) that you are happy for us to share your story, then we may publish it on our website or in other media.
  • We will not pass on your details to anyone else without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances and where we are required to do so by law (outlined in our safeguarding policy).

We may also request sensitive personal information for the purposes of implementing our Equality and Diversity policy, in particular to monitor our recruitment processes and to ensure that our peer support services are meeting everyone’s diverse needs. We will always ask your consent to collect this data and it will only be used for these monitoring purposes.

If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Information by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

4. The legal basis for using your information

Data protection laws set out several bases on which companies can collect and process personal data. We use the following:

  1. Consent– in some cases, we rely on your consent to collect and process data such as when you take part in a research study.
  2. Contractual obligations– sometimes, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations. For example, for us to pay employees or reimburse volunteers’ expenses, we need to have their bank details.
  3. Legal compliance– we may need to collect and process your personal data if required by law.
  4. Legitimate interest– in some cases, we use your data in accordance with our need to achieve our vision for all new mothers and families affected by postpartum psychosis to benefit from best-practice care and caring support through to full recovery. Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest' lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance.

Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, match peer support volunteers with people requesting support, improving our services, when you request our email newsletter, for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), thanking donors, or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission.

5. Marketing

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support APP by email, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner. However, if you have provided us with your postal address, we may send you information about our work and how you can support APP by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way. You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting app@app-network.org, or by post or telephone using the contact details you can find on our website here, or by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication.

6. Sharing your Information

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our employees (and volunteers) at APP so that they can support you. If you have signed a consent form to take part in research, this form will outline if we are collaborating with a University team to conduct the research. We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.

APP may however share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us on or on our behalf to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction. We make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. Some examples of where we may share your information are with our outsourced bookkeepers and payroll processors. We enter into contracts with these service providers that require them to comply with Data Protection Laws and ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to secure your information.

Legal disclosure
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority); or, in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.

7. Keeping your information safe

All the personal data we process is processed by our employees and volunteers in the UK however for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance this information may be located on servers elsewhere. Where we transfer your information outside the EEA (European Economic Area), ensure that appropriate safeguards on data security and processing are applied. Our policies, procedures and training cover data protection, confidentiality and security of data. We conduct regular reviews to ensure that that we continue to hold data securely.

8. How long we hold your information for

We only keep your personal data as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, we need to keep data related to Gift Aid for a certain period). Your information we use for marketing purposes will be kept with us until you notify us that you no longer wish to receive this information.

9. Your rights

You have rights over your personal data which must be fulfilled by Action on Postpartum Psychosis (as a Data Controller) at your request. The rights you have over your personal data include:

  • Access to your personal data: You have the right to access the personal data we hold about you. We will respond to any requests for data promptly and within the legally required time limit of one month from receipt of the request. If the request is complex or we receive several requests from you, that time limit may be extended by a further two months, in which case we will write to you within the first month to explain why the extension is necessary.
  • Amendment of personal data: If you tell us that any personal data processed by us is no longer accurate, we will make amendments based on the information you provide us.
  • Withdrawing your consent: If you have given us your consent to process your data, you can withdraw consent at any time.
  • Other rights: You may also have other data subject rights, including the right to erasure or deletion of personal data, to object to or restrict our processing of personal data and finally a right to data portability.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting us either by email to app@app-network.org or by post or telephone using the contact details you can find on our website here.

10. Cookies

Please see APP's cookie notice for information about how we use cookies.