We take your privacy very seriously, and recognise the courage it often takes to share experiences of mental health problems and of financial difficulty and the sensitive nature of the information you are sharing with us.
About Money and Mental Health
Money and Mental Health is a registered charity, no 1166493. Our purpose is to advance understanding of mental health, financial difficulty and the relationship between the two; to achieve this objective including through research, discussion, innovation and the design and testing of new approaches, and by disseminating the useful results of these endeavours.
Our Research Community of Experts by Experience is core to our work.
Our privacy policy for Research Community members
The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute (“the Institute”, “the charity”, “we” or “us”) is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses the personal data of Research Community members, and to meeting its data protection obligations. This policy sets out the Institute’s commitment to data protection, and individual rights and obligations in relation to personal data. It sets out how your personal data will be processed as controlled by The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, 22 Kingsway, WC2B 6LE.
This policy applies to the personal data of all members of the Money and Mental Health Research Community. These members are all members of the public with lived experience of mental health problems, or of supporting someone with mental health problems, who have signed up to take part in our research through the website https://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/community/.
The Charity has appointed the Chief Executive as the person with responsibility for data protection compliance within the Charity. Questions about this policy, or requests for further information, should be directed to him/her at [email protected]. This notice may change from time to time, so please check it regularly.
This Privacy and Cookie Policy outlines:
If you have any queries regarding this policy or the use of your personal information, please contact us at: [email protected].
Data Protection Principles
The Institute processes personal data in accordance with the following data protection principles:
What data we collect
We collect information when you complete the registration questionnaire for our Research Community. This may include:
You are not required to share any information that you don’t feel comfortable sharing. The only information required, for you to join the Research Community, is information needed to ensure that you are eligible to take part and to contact you, This data includes:
We also collect information when you voluntarily contribute to My Money and Mental Health by:
These responses may include further details about your financial experiences and your mental health problems. They may also include your telephone number if you volunteer to take part in a focus group, in-depth interview or as a media volunteer. We also collect and process information on the research activities you have taken part in, to help us send you the most relevant research opportunities and to make sure our emails are as interesting as possible.
We process personal identifying data, such as your name and emails, on the basis of your consent in signing up to the Research Community. You can leave the Research Community at any time by pressing ‘unsubscribe’ at the bottom of any email message from us, using the unsubscribe form on my.moneyandmentalhealth.org, or by emailing [email protected].
How we use the data you share with us
We collect and process personal data, including sensitive personal data, from Research Community members on a voluntary basis, with your consent. We use this information to:
We will NEVER use your information for any purpose other than research, or telling you about our research and campaigns. We will NOT try to sell you anything, nor use your information for marketing purposes. Nor will we ever pass your information to third parties for marketing purposes.
Part of Money and Mental Health's work is helping researchers and policymakers understand the links between money and mental health problems, and helping companies to improve the service they provide to people experiencing mental health problems.
In some cases, we may share anonymised data or quotes with charities and academics who are working on issues relating to money and mental health. No personal information which could be used to identify you will be shared with them.
We may also share anonymised quotes with companies, like banks and energy providers, to highlight the value of the Research Community’s insights, to encourage them to take part in our organisation’s wider work and to improve their services for people with mental health problems. This could include the use of anonymised quotes in training materials that are delivered to staff. We will also sometimes work with such companies to help them improve their practices and processes to support people with mental health problems. In doing so we may share anonymised data and quotes with them. In these cases, you will be informed at the beginning of the research activity that we’re working with a company, or companies, and given an opportunity to provide specific consent. We won’t always name the specific company, but when we don’t name the company we will always give you some information about what they do and why we’re working together. For example, we might say: ‘We are working with a major energy company to improve the letters they send to customers with money problems’. No personal information which could be used to identify you will be shared with them.
We might also share anonymised quotes with potential funders of the charity in order to highlight the crucial role that the Research Community plays in the research and policy work that we do. No personal information which could be used to identify you will be shared with them.
If you share your personal experience or the experience of a friend or relative with us through research activities or by email, we may record this sensitive personal data. We will only use this information to inform our charitable research and policy development activities, and to deal with your enquiry.
We will not pass on your details without your express permission, except in exceptional circumstances which may include anyone reporting serious self-harm, posing a threat to themselves or others, or sharing information about serious issues such as abuse or exploitation.
Where you have given express consent for us to share your story, for example in the media or through a blog, we may publish it.
We will keep your personal identifying data, like your name and email address, received when you sign up to the Research Community for two years, after which we will ask you again for consent to be a Research Community member.
If you choose to leave the Research Community, we will destroy all personal identifying information connected to your participation in the Research Community, including your name and email address. If you have separately signed up for our Professional Network or newsletter, you must unsubscribe from those lists separately. The information you have shared with us about your experiences of financial difficulty and mental health problems will continue to be stored in an anonymised format in our secure servers. We will continue to process this anonymised data on the grounds of our legitimate interest in achieving our charitable objectives.
Where we transfer and store data
In addition to our systems, the information that you provide to us may be stored in secure servers which are operated by trusted providers. We share your information with these trusted providers, who work on our behalf to deliver our services, but they only process this information under our instructions. These include Google and QuestionPro. Google uses servers based in the United States of America. Google has been certified under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield certification, which allows us to legally transfer your personal data to them. QuestionPro uses servers based in the Netherlands but given the adequacy agreements in place between UK and EU GDPR legislation, your data continues to be protected under the same rulings set out in UK GDPR regulation. In cases of an unlikely data breach, QuestionPro will notify the Lead Supervising Authority, which they’ve selected to be the Dutch Data Protection Authority given the location of their physical servers.
You can view QuestionPro’s privacy policy here and Google’s Privacy Policy here.
How long will we keep the information you provide?
We will keep the information you provided when you joined My Money and Mental Health, or the Money and Mental Health Research Community, together with any information you provided in response to a recruitment questionnaire or when signing up as a media volunteer for as long as you remain a member of the community. We will ask for your consent to remain a member of the Research Community once every two years.
You can leave the community any time you wish. We will remove you from our community once the community is closed. When you leave the community or the community is closed, we will delete all your contact details, together with any other information that could be used to identify you, leaving only anonymous content and anonymous responses to any surveys and activities you may have participated in.
Your Individual Rights
You have several individual rights in relation to your personal data that we collect, which we are committed to respecting. In particular, you have the right to:
Additionally, where we collect your personal details for sending you newsletters, campaigns or updates related to our work, you have the right at any time to notify us that you no longer want to receive this information.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting us, by email at [email protected], by phone on 0207 848 1448, or by post at Money and Mental Health, Virginia Woolf Building, 22 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6LE. You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office, https://ico.org.uk.
Subject access requests
Individuals have the right to make a subject access request. If an individual makes a subject access request, the Charity will tell him/her:
The Charity will also provide the individual with a copy of the personal data undergoing processing. This will normally be in electronic form if the individual has made a request electronically, unless he/she agrees otherwise.
If the individual wants additional copies, the Charity will charge a fee, which will be based on the administrative cost to the Charity of providing the additional copies.
If you wish to activate any of these rights, or to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our office at [email protected]. In some cases, the Charity may need to ask for proof of identification before the request can be processed. The Charity will inform the individual if it needs to verify his/her identity and the documents it requires. The Charity will normally respond to a request within a period of one month from the date it is received. In some cases, such as where the Charity processes large amounts of the individual's data, it may respond within three months of the date the request is received. The Charity will write to the individual within one month of receiving the original request to tell him/her if this is the case.
If a subject access request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, the Charity is not obliged to comply with it. Alternatively, the Charity can agree to respond but will charge a fee, which will be based on the administrative cost of responding to the request. A subject access request is likely to be manifestly unfounded or excessive where it repeats a request to which the Charity has already responded. If an individual submits a request that is unfounded or excessive, the Charity will notify him/her that this is the case and whether or not it will respond to it.
Our use of Cookies
Like many websites, My Money and Mental Health and our online surveys use Cookies to allow us to personalise your visits to this site, keep track of your preferences and learn about the way you use the site.
A cookie is a small text file that is downloaded onto your computer when you visit our website and allows us to recognise you as a user. Typically, these contain two pieces of information: a site name and unique user ID. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and anonymous - you cannot be identified by a cookie on its own.
Cookies are essential to the effective operation of our website. These files are used as sparingly as possible and only for quality control, validation and, more importantly, to prevent us sending you reminders for any online survey you have already completed. We also automatically capture information about your operating system, display settings and browser type in order to ensure that the survey questionnaire is delivered in a form suited to the software your device is using. If you have checked the box to save your login name and password, a functional or persistent cookie is saved in your hard drive.
My Money and Mental Health and our research activities may use cookies:
Our site also includes a number of features which allow users to share some of our content via social media. This does not set a cookie by itself, but if one is present it will read it. Money and Mental Health doesn’t have direct access to those cookies and the use of those third-party cookies is governed solely by the respective service provider’s Privacy statement. By using our websites you consent to our use of cookies as updated from time to time and the cookies we use will be stored on your device (unless this functionality is rejected or disabled by your browser).
Additionally, you may delete and block all cookies from any website, within your web browser settings if necessary. Please be aware that restricting or deleting cookies will impact on the functionality of the site.
The cookies are stored for a period of two years unless you clear their cache and the cookies themselves.
Opting Out of Cookies
You can manage the cookies stored on your device as well as stop cookies from being installed on your browser. You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones). Find out how to control and delete cookies in your browser. If you choose to refuse all cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to and you may not be able to participate in our research activities.
Digital fingerprints
We may use digital fingerprinting technology, also known as "Machine Identification" digital fingerprints to gather certain information about your computer hardware and software. For example, your IP address, the display settings of your monitor, the type of browser you are using, the type of operating system you are using etc. This information is converted into a unique serial number - the digital "fingerprint". This serial number is stored with the other information you provide for research quality control purposes.
Keeping your data safe
We take very seriously our responsibilities to keep your personal information secure. As such we take every reasonable precaution to ensure your information is protected from loss, theft or misuse. These precautions include appropriate physical security of our offices, controlled access to computer systems, and use of secure, encrypted internet connections when collecting personal information. When you register to join My Money and Mental Health, you will be asked to set up a username and password. In order to keep your personal details secure, you must keep your username and password information confidential as giving this information to other people will allow them to access your personal details. Once logged in every page in the community website uses secure connections in order to protect the information you provide. While we strive to protect your personal information, you will understand that we cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to us over the internet. Therefore, please do not submit personal information to us online unless you accept the security risks of doing so.
Other websites
The My Money and Mental Health website may contain links to other websites or other online resources. This privacy policy only applies to this community and the community website. When you use the links provided to visit the other websites, you should read their own privacy policies. The privacy policy that covers the main Money and Mental Health Policy Institute website can be found here.
Changes to our privacy policy
This privacy policy was last updated in October 2023. It may be updated from time to time. Any changes made to this privacy policy will be updated on our website, and you will be notified by email if necessary and appropriate. If you are unhappy with any changes to this policy, you are free to leave the Money and Mental Health Research Community at any time.
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