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

Generally, an agency has no lawful basis to 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 contrary to 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

✗ It would be unusual for an agency to 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 is generally understood to belong 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

These services are free and easily accessible, and you don’t need a lawyer to make a complaint – though for anything complex, getting advice first is worth it.

✋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 different from recording client information in a third-party commercial platform without authorisation.

🕐Outside work hours – your personal time is generally your own

Your employer’s policies mainly govern your conduct in the course of your duties. What you do in your personal time – including supporting a family you know personally – isn’t automatically subject to workplace policy. One thing worth checking: some employment agreements define confidentiality broadly enough to cover things you learned through your role, even if you’re acting on that outside rostered hours. Read your own agreement, or ask your employer or union directly, rather than assuming.

📱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 is a family-owned care diary that the family controls. Contributing to MyLog at a family’s invitation is a different thing from your professional record-keeping obligations – those relate to your employer’s systems, not to what a family chooses to maintain for themselves. If you’re ever unsure where the line sits for your specific role, it’s worth asking your employer directly rather than guessing.

🤝The family’s consent is a central part of the picture

If a family has invited you to contribute to MyLog and consented to the information being recorded there, that’s a meaningful exercise of their own privacy rights over their own family member’s information. The person and their whānau are at the centre of the Enabling Good Lives framework. This is general information, though – not a ruling on any specific employer’s policy, which is worth checking on its own terms.

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

✗ Questions worth asking if your employer pushes back:

Employment law changed in Feb 2026 – treat these as starting points for a conversation with Employment NZ or your union, not guarantees.

✗  Is what I did in my own time with a family I know personally actually covered by workplace policy – or is my employer stretching it?

✗  Was I actually using agency client data, or only helping a family with their own record at their invitation?

✗  Was the family’s own consent and control over their own information properly considered?

✗  Was I told the allegations clearly, given real time to prepare, and offered a support person? (Note: since Feb 2026, process mistakes alone don’t automatically make a disciplinary outcome unjustified unless they actually led to unfair treatment – so this is a “check carefully” area, not an automatic win.)

✗  Does the confidentiality clause in my actual agreement cover personal observations made outside work hours, or is my employer assuming it does?

⚖️Things it’s reasonable to expect – but confirm, don’t assume

Good employers generally still:

• Tell you the allegations clearly and in writing
• Give you reasonable time to prepare your response
• Allow you to bring a support person to any disciplinary meeting
• Disclose evidence they’re relying on in advance
• Run a fair process before reaching any finding

But as of February 2026, a process error on its own is less likely to overturn an outcome unless it actually caused you unfair treatment – so a missed step isn’t automatically a win the way it used to be. If you think your employer hasn’t run a fair process, contact Employment New Zealand (employment.govt.nz) or your union early – initial advice is often free, and getting it before a meeting matters more than getting it after.