FirstLight is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure. We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes. By using our website, you are agreeing to be bound by this Policy.  Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to [email protected] or by calling us on 01-8732711.

FirstLight, formerly the Irish Sudden Infant Death Association is a registered charity established some 40 years ago (CHY 7716 with the Irish Revenue Commissioners, Registered Charity No.20017651 with the Charities Regulatory Authority and company number 113349). The registered address is Carmichael House, 4 North Brunswick Street, Dublin 7.  FirstLight’s purpose is to provide professional, qualified support to parents and families who have lost a child suddenly. Through understanding their grieving process and receiving help in dealing with bereavement from appropriately trained professionals, families can learn to live with their loss and begin rebuilding their lives.  They can find the FirstLight.

FirstLight’s services are provided nationwide, free of charge, and include crisis intervention, individual counselling and psychotherapy, couple counselling and psychotherapy, structured group therapy, home visits, a befriending service and National Lo-Call helpline.

FirstLight provides training in bereavement to frontline health, paramedic, Gardai, and related service providers. FirstLight receives some State funding and relies substantially on the generosity of its corporate supporters, volunteers and the general public to provide its critical services.

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you fill in forms on our site, when you contact us about FirstLight and our services, or purchase products and services, to make a donation, or if you register to receive information from us. We may collect and process data about you from information that you provide when placing an order with us by telephone (this includes your name, address and payment details). If you contact us in writing or by telephone, we may keep a record of that correspondence, and we may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.

What Type Of Information Is Collected From You?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what webpages are accessed and when. If you make a donation online or purchase a product from us, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

How Is Your Information Used?

We may use your information to:

• process a donation that you have made which will include administrative functions such as receipting the donation and contacting you for the purposes of the governments Charitable Donation Scheme if you have donated over €250 in a tax year;
• process orders that you have submitted;
• send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes. These may include our Newsletter, information about our conferences, campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities, education, training and events that we hold;
• process a job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity.

Who Has Access To Your Information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. We may pass your information to our third party service providers for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations, claim tax back from the Revenue Commissioners or send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. When you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions.

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information. For example, your personal data held by us is subject to access restriction. Our employees must use password-protected log-in screens to gain entry to such restricted information. All employees are provided with training to help keep them up-to-date on our security and privacy practices.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. We will do our best to protect your personal data, but cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the Website; any transmission is at your own risk.

If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

Security Precautions In Place To Protect The Loss, Misuse Or Alteration Of Your Information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Credit or debit card details are encrypted and protected. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.  Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Use Of ‘Cookies’

Like many other websites, FirstLight uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual.

Links To Other Websites

Our website may contain links to other websites. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them by using links from our website.   In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

Review Of This Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated on 21 May 2018.