1. Confidentiality and Duty To Report

Every contact and discussion with us is considered confidential, and our staff upholds professional secrecy.

There are two legally mandated exceptions to to our confidentiality clause:

• We encounter a situation where we feel worried that the safety and well-being of a child is endangered and a child welfare report should be made.
• We are given information that indicates that a child will be or has been the victim of a criminal act.

In such instances, we strive to be open about our legally mandated requirement with the contacting party, and to promote co-operation. Please be aware, that we do not need the consent of the contactee when making reports to the police or to child welfare, as these reports are legally mandated. If the need for a report or contact arises, we might ask for your personal information, such a social security number, phone number, home address, full name in order to help the authorities in contacting the right people.

In order to provide the best possible help and information, we might consult internally with other experts on the team. All of our experets are mandated to uphold professional secrecy, if they are privy to information regarding any contacts. If we consult parties outside our own team, we only do so if the contacting party consents to the consulting. Please be aware, that if we are mandated to contact the authorities or child support services, we do not need to ask for the consent of the contactee.

2. Principles For A Safer Space

You Are Not Alone – service seeks to uphold the general principles for a safer space created by the Family Federation of Finland (Väestöliitto). These principles apply to all areas of our services, including but no limited to: our phone-, and online services, training sessions and events. The core principles we seek to uphold include trustworthiness, responsibility toward one another, listening and being present, learning together, giving space and voice to those who need it, mutual respect and acting to protect others and our selves when actions infringe on the well-being and rights of others. You can read more about the principles here..

Our Principles When Working With Contactees.

We try to avoid making any assumptions about you and your life, and to better understand your situation we might ask clarifying questions. You are free to decline in answering questions and free to provide any relevant information, if we haven’t thought of asking about it. We seek to uphold the values of equality and equity in our services, and hope that our service remains safe to everyone. If you spot any deficiencies in our services or our work, please let us know.

Our support services are built on mutual respect. Please do not insult, seek to hurt or use discriminatory language when in contact with us. Our experts have a right to decline services, if they have been treated inappropriately, and may close the chat, or cut off the call if necessary. Such acts can be resorted to if our experts are targets of consistent insults, threats or time-wasting attempts at contact with no actual intent for discussion.

Our experts are here for you and your needs, and not theirs. Our experts have the right to decline any questions regarding their personal lives to protect their privacy.

Family Federation of Finland’s Harassment and Discrimimination Contact Liaisons

Family Federation of Finland has two active harassment and discrimination contact liaisons, who are there for you, if you have encountered inappropriate behaviour in our events or services.
Click here to read more about our liaisons and for the contact form. 

3. Data Security and Privacy

Family Federaton of Finland is responsible for protecting the privacy and any data regarding the contactees and employees of the serivce. You Are Not Alone service collects anonymized stastistics on all contacts, which can be used to:

• Create reports about the service
• Improve the service and our materials
• Communicate information about our service
• As parts of our training materials

No collected information is used for commercial purposes

Chat

Any text in our chat service is automatically deleted after 60 days, counting from the moment the discussion is closed. The chat service displays the IP-address to the expert involved, but no other identifiable information is provided. The IP-address is saved by our service provider (Ninchat) on their servers as a part of the metrics and statistics they gather. In instances of criminal activity, or if the welfare of a child is endangered Finnish authorties can find the IP-address of contactee. All data is removed from Ninchat servers after a year.

Contact Forms and Email.

Contacts made by email or by using forms on our website will be deleted once they are no longer necessary for working purposes. Only the experts currently working in the service are able to see any emails or contacts made through forms.

Phone Calls

When contacting our service number, our service provider (Cuuma Communications) collects and stores your phone number. Any information regarding calls is only available to experts working currently in our service. Any information stored will be deleted after a year.

Social Media

Comments published in social media services are public and linked to your user name and account in those corresponding services. Before posting, please take time to consider what you are about to post to protect your personal information and to uphold a safe, welcoming environment. We reserve the right to moderate our channels, including deletion of comments violating the privacy of others or containing inappropriate language or behaviour. We will also report any inappropriate activity the platforms, and if necessary, to the corresponding authorities.

Our Newsletter, Questionnaires and Sign-up Forms.

We collect information when you are signing up for our news letter, our training sessions or events or answering our questionnaires. Only the relevant people will be able to access this identifiable information. Once the basis for storing this information has ended, all collected information will be deleted. You can cancel your subscription to our newsletter, which will also result in the deletion of your information from our database.

Privacy Statement

For more information about our data privacy, you can consult our privacy statement.