know-your-rights

⚖️You own the information about your family member’s care

Under the Privacy Act 2020, personal information about your disabled family member belongs to them and by extension to you as their family or appointed guardian. Agencies collect and hold information in their capacity as service providers, but they do not own it. You have the right to access, use, and maintain your own parallel record of your family member’s care, goals, and wellbeing.

🏠You have the right to use a tool of your own choosing

No agency can lawfully prevent your family from maintaining your own care diary. A family-owned record like MyLog is exactly that – yours. You are not entering agency systems or circumventing agency processes. You are exercising your right to document your own family member’s life in a tool you control.

📋You can ask your support worker to contribute to MyLog

As the family, you can invite your support worker to log observations in MyLog. You are the account owner. You control who has access. The data belongs to you and travels with your family – not with the agency, not with the worker, not with the provider.

🛡️Enabling Good Lives supports your right to self-direction

The Enabling Good Lives principles – underpinning New Zealand’s disability support framework – include self-determination, family and whānau as partners, and ordinary life outcomes. An agency restricting your family’s ability to maintain your own care record runs directly against these principles. MyLog is recognised in the Enabling Good Lives Waikato resource directory as a legitimate family tool.

Built on Te Whare Tapa Whā

MyLog is structured around Te Whare Tapa Whā – the four pillars of Māori holistic wellbeing: taha wairua (spiritual), taha hinengaro (mental and emotional), taha tinana (physical), and taha whānau (family and social). This means MyLog captures your family member as a whole person, not their clinical support needs. The framework is pre-filled. Logging an entry takes minutes.

✓ An agency CAN legitimately:

✓  Require their support workers to also log in the agency’s own system – their internal record-keeping obligations remain

✓  Set reasonable data security expectations for their workers

✓  Ensure funded support hours are spent on direct support, not excessive administration

✗ An agency CANNOT lawfully:

✗  Claim ownership of observations about your family member’s life and wellbeing

✗  Prevent your family from maintaining a parallel, family-owned care record

✗  Withhold care information – including support provided, goals set, and progress tracked – from your family

✗  Retain your family’s care history when you change providers – that history belongs to you

📞You have formal channels available

If an agency attempts to prevent you from using MyLog or withholds care information from your family, you can raise a formal complaint with:

• Office of the Privacy Commissioner – www.privacycommissioner.govt.nz
• Health and Disability Commissioner – www.hdc.org.nz
• Whaikaha (Ministry of Disabled People) – www.whaikaha.govt.nz
• Enabling Good Lives – www.enablinggoodlives.co.nz

You do not need a lawyer to make these complaints. These services are free and easily accessible.

✋You can contribute to a family’s MyLog – at their invitation

If a family invites you to log entries in their MyLog account, you are contributing to a family-owned record – not using an unapproved agency system. The data belongs to the family. You are a contributor at their request, in the same way you might help a family complete a personal document they own and control. This is fundamentally different from recording client information in a third-party commercial platform without authorisation.

🕐Outside work hours – your personal time is your own

Your employer’s policies govern your conduct in the course of your duties. What you choose to do in your personal time – including supporting a family you know personally, testing a pre-launch product, or providing informal feedback on a digital tool – is not automatically subject to your employer’s workplace policies. The key question is always: were you acting in your professional capacity, or your personal one?

📱MyLog is not a competing system – it is a family tool

MyLog does not replace your agency’s record-keeping system. It does not store agency client data. It does not interfere with your professional obligations. It is a family-owned care diary that the family controls. Using or contributing to MyLog at a family’s invitation does not breach your obligation to use your employer’s systems. Those obligations relate to professional record-keeping, not to what families choose to maintain for themselves.

🤝The family’s consent is the operative authorisation on privacy

If a family has invited you to contribute to MyLog and consented to the information being recorded there, the privacy interest has been exercised by the people who hold it – the family. Your employer does not hold a privacy interest in a disabled person’s life that is superior to the family’s own exercise of their rights. The person and their whānau are at the centre of the Enabling Good Lives framework – not the agency.

Te Whare Tapa Whā – what you are actually logging

MyLog entries are structured around Te Whare Tapa Whā – taha wairua (spiritual), taha hinengaro (mental and emotional), taha tinana (physical), and taha whānau (family and social). The framework presents pre-filled prompts across these dimensions. You tap the relevant entries and add a note only if you choose to. These are holistic wellbeing observations of a whole person, not clinical care records or shift notes. The distinction matters.

✓ Your employer CAN legitimately:

✓  Require you to use their approved systems for professional record-keeping during funded support hours

✓  Set reasonable data security expectations for how you handle company and client information in your professional role

✓  Expect you to maintain professional boundaries with the people you support in accordance with your employment agreement

✓  Include reasonable confidentiality obligations in your employment agreement covering information you access in the course of your duties

✗ Your employer CANNOT lawfully:

✗  Claim that what you do in your personal time with families you know personally is subject to workplace policies

✗  Prohibit you from collaborating with any family at the family’s specific invitation, outside work hours, without using any agency client data

✗  Assert a privacy interest on behalf of a family who have exercised their own rights consciously and affirmatively

✗  Discipline you for misconduct without providing reasonable notice, sufficient time to prepare, and the opportunity to arrange representation – as required under section 103A of the Employment Relations Act 2000

✗  Apply workplace confidentiality obligations to information that did not originate from your employment relationship – personal observations made outside work hours are not company property

✗  Treat a family’s independent exercise of their privacy rights as a breach of your professional obligations

⚖️You have rights in any disciplinary process

Under the Employment Relations Act 2000 and the principles of natural justice, you are entitled to:

• Be told the allegations clearly and in writing
• Have reasonable time to prepare your response
• Bring a support person to any disciplinary meeting
• Have all evidence relied upon disclosed to you in advance
• Have a fair process before any finding is made

If you believe your employer has not followed a fair process, you can contact Employment New Zealand (employment.govt.nz) or seek advice from your union or an employment lawyer. Initial employment advice is often free.