FOIA POLICY
The Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) policy guarantees citizens of the Commonwealth and representatives of the media access to public records held by public bodies, public officials, and public employees.
HIPAA PRIVACY POLICY
The DBHDS notice of Privacy Practices describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. This notice describes the privacy practices of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS), including the Central Office and each of the state mental health hospitals and training centers DBHDS operates.
TERMS OF USE AND WEB SITE PRIVACY POLICY STATEMENT
This Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Statement addresses the collection, use, security and access of/to personal information that may be collected and maintained through use of Internet sites owned and operated by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) or any of the hospitals and training centers operated thereby.
It is the policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia and DBHDS that personal information about citizens will be collected only to the extent necessary to provide services and/or benefits thereto; that only appropriate information will be collected; and that the citizen shall understand the reason the information is collected and be able to examine the information so collected and maintained by DBHDS.
COOKIES – COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
This DBHDS Site:
- Collects no personal information, except as provided in the next paragraph.
- Does not place a “cookie” on your computer. (A “cookie” is a small piece of information that can be sent by a server to be stored on a user’s browser so that it can later be read back from that browser.)
- Will not track your movements through the site.
- May allow you to send comments or requests to DBHDS mailboxes or participate in list server discussion groups. E-mail addresses and messages so obtained shall not be used for other purposes and shall not be sold or otherwise distributed to outside organizations, except as required by law. Be advised, however, that any e-mail message received by DBHDS that is in and of itself unlawful, seeks to aid or abet an unlawful act, or has as its intended purpose the destruction or disruption of DBHDS information technology resources, may be turned over to an appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation and/or prosecution.
- DBHDS may deploy firewall and intrusion detection technologies that log connections to this site. Log entries typically include source and destination Internet Protocol addresses, domain names, services/protocols used and other non-personal information. Such log files tend to be very large and are intended to be used primarily for performance monitoring and troubleshooting by technical support staff; as such, they have a limited disk-life and are not archived. However, if during routine monitoring and troubleshooting, evidence of unlawful acts or attempts to cause the destruction or disruption of DBHDS information technology resources is uncovered, the log files may be retained and turned over to an appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation and/or prosecution.
The following is a message from the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA).
The security of your personal information is important to us!
Diligent efforts are made to ensure the security of Commonwealth of Virginia systems. Before you use this Web site to conduct business with the Commonwealth of Virginia, please ensure your personal computer is not infected with malicious code that collects your personal information. This code is referred to as a keylogger. The way to protect against this is to maintain current Anti-Virus and security patches.
LINK POLICY
For your convenience, this DBHDS site may provide links to sites operated by other government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private businesses. These outside links are determined by DBHDS management to provide information that may be of interest to users of this site. The footing of every web page in this site contains a link to the Links and resources page.
PLUG-INS
Files in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are used throughout the site. You may download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. More plug-ins are available at the bottom of every web page in this site, or via Technical Links.
ACCESSIBILITY INITIATIVE
The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) commitment to lead the internet to its full potential includes promoting a high degree of usability for people with disabilities. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), in coordination with organizations around the world, is pursuing internet accessibility through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development.
ACCESSIBILITY POLICY
To help support the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), this site is complying with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines for accessibility. At a minimum, this site meets Level A Conformance to Internet Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, as well as conforming to the HTML 4.01 standard.
DISCLAIMER
When you link to another site from any DBHDS site, the scope and effect of this Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Statement ends and that of the linked-to site begins. The provision of links to other sites shall not be construed as an endorsement by DBHDS of any content, viewpoint, product or service expressed or marketed by the operator of the linked-to site.
Although every effort is made to keep this site updated, neither DBHDS nor any employee or contractor thereof warrants the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of any information published on this site or any site that links to or is linked from this site. DBHDS shall not be held liable for any losses caused by reliance on the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of such information. Any person or entity that relies on any information obtained using this site does so at his or her own risk.
As we are a department in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the DBHDS internet site is required to link to and display the “Commonwealth Banner” on the top line of each web page. The “Commonwealth Banner” files reside on the Virginia.gov web site. Periodically a Virginia.gov technical difficulty will temporarily distort the “Commonwealth Banner”, affecting the rendering of the DBHDS banner and the upper part of the web page. Virginia.gov technical difficulties are outside of DBHDS control and are generally of short duration.