Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files that get stored in your browser or on your device when you visit a website.

In general, there’s two types of cookies:

Technical cookies meant to improve your experience on a site by remembering your preferences or password or things that you’ve added to a shopping cart or, for us, if you use our accessibility tool, to remember how you prefer to have to site look and function.

Analytic or profiling cookies (sometimes called “trackers”) used to track your behaviour on a site (often used to support advertising of products to you)

Cookies are also split into those that are “strictly necessary” are those that are not.

This page tells you about the cookies that we use and what we use them for.

Technical Cookies

What are “strictly necessary” cookies?

Under GPDR, the UK Data Protection Act and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, you must give your consent for a site to use any cookies when you visit them. There is an exemption to this, called the “strictly necessary exemption”, which applies to cookies that are essential for ‘information society service’ (a website) to provide the service that the user is requesting.

The example most used for this is using cookies to make sure items you’ve put in a basket don’t disappear before you’ve had the chance to check out.

Also included under the definition of “strictly necessary cookies” are those that ensure that the content of a page loads quickly and effectively (in other words, that the site is actually usable)

What do we use?

There are three strictly necessary cookies on our site that allow it to function:

YouTube metadata cookies (VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA): YouTube clips are embedded on some pages. YouTube uses cookies when these are played to ensure they function.

Essential functioning cookies (ASP.NET_SessionId and csrftoken): Used to maintain anonymity whilst browsing and is essential for the site to function (one cookie is for our main site, the other for our online support platform)

In addition to these strictly necessary cookies, YouTube also uses 2 other cookies for when embedded videos are played; one is to track your preferences across the site (if you use captions on one video, they’ll appear on the next video too) and the other is so that views of the video on our site count to towards the overall views of that video on YouTube’s main site.

Analytic Cookies

We use Google Analytics to understand how people use our site. The information gathered in this way is entirely anonymous. We don’t track you as an individual and it’s important to us that you are free to access whatever information you need on our site, without worrying about someone finding out. You can find tools to understand and control your privacy online at the end of this policy. Information on what information is collected below.

Opting out

Analytics cookies are not considered to be “strictly necessary", and as a result you are free to opt out of these being collected.

Your Google Profile

Some of the information collected comes from the Google profile that is signed on the browser you are using. It’s important to know that

We cannot see any information about this profile
If your profile states you are under 18, Google doesn’t collect any information on you that feeds into Google Analytics
If you are signed in, Google itself can also see your search history (what you type into a search engine) but not your browsing history (the pages you visit)

“Acquisition” data

This is whether you arrived at our site from a direct link you had, from googling it or from a link on another site (but not what site this was). This helps us understand how people find our service, and where our resources are best spent to reach the young people that might be looking for us.

“Engagement” data

This is essentially what pages get the most views and how long they’re viewed for This helps to know what content is the most valuable so we can make more of it.

“Behaviour” data

This is about the journey users tend to take through our site. This helps us understand why people come to our site as well as information like;

If they arrive at our “make a referral” page, what it was that helped them get there?
Do users go straight there because they know that’s what they want to do, or do they explore the site and look at information about our services or read help articles first?
How often do people tend to come back to our site?

This information helps us to make sure you can get to the bits that are important to you easily and helps us know where we need to put essential information, so it gets seen.

“Tech” data

This is about what devices and browsers people use to access our site. Websites can function very differently on different phones and operating systems, and knowing what devices most users are using helps us to prioritise these systems when testing any new features or redesigns on our site. For example, if most people use an iPhone, we know we need to do extensive testing on Safari browsers and iOS to make sure things look how and function how we want them to.

“Conversation” data

A “conversion” is a specific behaviour that Google Analytics is asked to count. For most sites it will be something like clicking the “check-out” button on a purchase. For us we track the how often the buttons that bring up our referral forms are clicked. We compare this to the number of visits the page that has them on receives, and to the number of completed referrals we receive. This information helps us understand where blocks might be for people thinking about accessing support, how difficult our forms might be to complete and how often someone might arrive at the stage of asking for support before they submit a referral.

“Attributes” data

Approximate location

Google analytics captures IP addresses for those accessing the site. We cannot use this information to identify individuals and we don’t see this IP address ourselves. It is used to show the approximate location of those accessing our site (the city) in an anonymous form. This is helpful for us to see which parts of Greater Manchester most users are (Manchester, Salford etc) and to know if people access our site nationally or beyond (for example, if we put on an event in London and see lots of users from London afterwards, it tells us a lot about the impact that event might have had).

Language

The dominant language used in the browser that you access our site from can help to know if we need to prioritise translating things into any particular language or look into providing more accessible services to those speaking it.

Demographic information

If you’re signed in to a Google account on your browser and your Google account says that you’re over 18, then information associated with that Google account flows into Google Analytics. Whilst it is possible for this information to be captured, we don’t use this feature because it doesn’t tell us anything meaningful (such a high portion of those accessing our site are under 18, that the data left over wouldn’t really tell us anything accurate).

Functional cookies

To ensure all the above works properly and gives accurate information, there are a few cookies that are needed for Google Analytics to function properly. One is to throttle requests to the site (so that constantly reloading it or potentially malicious bots don’t cause issues). One allows Google Analytics to know that the same user has gone from one page to the next in the same session. The last one is used to give each user a unique identifier so that the number of unique visitors is a more accurate figure.

Privacy tools

If you’re interested in understanding more about your privacy online, we’d recommend looking at the tools and articles below.

Incognito mode and private browsing

Most browsers come with an option to activate additional privacy settings and some, such as Duck Duck Go, come with them on by default.

Privacy modes are usually designed to prevent a user on your device or browser from seeing your activity by preventing cookies being saved locally. This makes it appear as though you are a new user each time you visit a site.

These browsers don’t prevent analytic cookies and sites are still able to track your behaviour (whilst appearing as a new user each time)

Using these modes doesn’t interfere with the functioning of the site, but because they make it appear that you’re a new user each time you visit our site, things like settings, passwords and prior consent to cookies won’t be remembered.

If you are signed in to a Google profile whilst in this mode, your data is still collected by Google.

VPNs

VPNs (“virtual private networks”) hide your actual IP address and can make it appear that you’re at a different one.

Using a VPN doesn’t impact the functioning of our site, other than making the information gathered via analytic cookies about your approximate location inaccurate.

If you are using a VPN, it is worth reading their privacy and data policies carefully. Many free VPNs capture your behaviour themselves and may sell this on to third parties, potentially making your browsing less secure.

You can find information about VPNs at the following sites, but we recommend checking a number of sources to get a sense of which one may be best for you (and being cautious around sites pretending to offer independent insights that are actually maintained by the makers of specific products)

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-vpn

https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-vpn

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-vpn/

https://www.wired.com/story/best-vpn/

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-vpn/