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Early Help Privacy Notice
This notice relates to the City of Doncaster Council’s Early Help services and systems and explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect it, how we use it and may share it. The Council is committed to meeting its data protection obligations and handling your information securely. You should make sure you read and understand this notice before submitting your information to us.
The City of Doncaster Council (the Council) is the Data Controller for the purposes of the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018. The information you provide helps us to support you and your family and meet our legal responsibilities, for example an assessment of social care or carer support needs. This Privacy Notice explains what information we collect about you, how we use it and your information rights.
Doncaster Early Help services provides and works with a wide range of support services to children, young people and families. Dependent on your need, we can provide support through universal, targeted or specialist services, working with you, other teams within Children’s Services and partner agencies, to make sure you get quick and easy access to a wide range of support when you need it. We aim to reach families who are vulnerable to life’s challenges and those with multiple complex needs. Our services are offered across the borough in a range of community settings.
The data collected will include personal characteristics such as your name, contact details, family situation, and ethnic group and may also include any medical information. We need to use this personal, and often sensitive information, to:-
- help make the right decisions about the type of service, you or your family might need
- provide appropriate support and care to meet your families needs
- assess whether our services are making a difference
- develop and improve services and measure how well the council as a whole is doing
- administer and protect public funds
We may use your contact details to ask if you would like to provide feedback or take part in local or national surveys about early help
What information about you do we collect?
For the processing to which this notice relates to be carried out we use the following information:
- personal information (such as name, date of birth and address)
- sensitive information (such as ethnicity and disability)
- details of the services and events that you have accessed through Early Help targeted services
- information you provide to us through the early help assessment and family plans (this helps us understand what support you need, by whom and when. This is also monitored to make sure that we have the right involvement at the right time)
How do we collect information about you?
We collect personal/special category information through various sources including direct contact from you and your family, assessments, from other professionals, telephone conversations, email communication, face to face visits, surveys and questionnaires. In order to comply with GDPR, we will inform you at the point of collection, whether you are required to provide certain information to us or if you have a choice in this. We also work with and collect information from other sources, that can include:
- schools (attendance and exclusion information, details to support statutory processes, unique pupil number and pupil characteristics)
- employment services from our internal services and the Department of Work and Pensions (adults out of work or at risk of financial exclusion and young people who are at risk of worklessness)
- the Probation Service and Police (anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse, criminal offenses, probation information and young people missing from home)
- health services (information about your additional requirements)
- housing providers
How will your information be used?
As a Local Authority we ensure that the use of personal/special category data meets all of our legal and statutory duties. We use personal/special category data to:
- support children, young people and families, and to monitor their progress
- provide children, young people and families with help that meets their personal, social (wellbeing), emotional, academic and employment needs
- assess the quality of our services
- evaluate and improve our policies on how we provide support to families
- safeguard and protect children and young people
- to contact you and get feedback on our services and strategies, to ensure we can deliver a better service
- to let you know about events/activities/services that may be of interest to you, if you have agreed for us to do so
The Legal Basis for using your information
The table below sets out the legal basis for each of the activities that this Privacy Notice covers:
Consent (and withdrawing consent)
The Council initially collects information about you on the basis that you have given us your consent to do so. You may withdraw your consent, prior to any work being carried out with you and your family, and your case will be closed but information will still be retained as per the retention policy.
Information required by contract (or information required to enter into a contract)
You are required to provide us with your information to receive this service. The consequences of not providing the information requested are that services will not be able to provide the help and support you and your family need.
Personal Data Activity | Legal basis - GDPR Article 6 | S8 DPA (delete as appropriate) | UK Legislation |
| To support and promote the wellbeing of children , young people and families. | (1)(c) to do so is necessary because of a legal obligation that applies to the Council |
| Childcare Act 2006 Section 1 Section 1: Duty on local authorities to improve the well-being of young children in their area and reduce inequalities between them.
Section 10: Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 requires each local authority to make arrangements to promote cooperation between the authority, each of the authority's relevant partners and such other persons or bodies working with children in the local authority's area as the authority considers appropriate. |
| To support and promote the wellbeing of children , young people and families | (1)(e) to do so is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, or in the exercise of official authority |
(c) the exercise of a function conferred on a person by an enactment or rule of law,
|
Childcare Act 2006 Section 1 Section 1: Duty on local authorities to improve the well-being of young children in their area and reduce inequalities between them.
Section 10: Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 requires each local authority to make arrangements to promote cooperation between the authority, each of the authority's relevant partners and such other persons or bodies working with children in the local authority's area as the authority considers appropriate. |
| Special Category Data Activity | Legal basis - GDPR Article 9 | DPA 2018 condition | Other considerations |
| An individual has consented to early help and the processing of his or her personal data. Consent is recorded.
| (2)(a) the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing |
| The Children’s Act 2004.
Part 1 of schedule 1(1) Employment, social security and social protection.
|
| An indvidual has consented to early help and we are supporting you to meet your identified needs.
| (2)(b) processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the controller or of the data subject in the field of employment and social security and social protection law. | Part 1 of schedule 1 | The Children’s Act 2004
s.35 Digital Economy Act 2017
Part 1 of schedule 1(1) Employment, social security and social protection.
|
| In order to safeguard vulnerable children and adults. | (2)(g) processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest. | Part 2 of schedule 1 |
|
Consent (and withdrawing consent)
The Council initially collects information about you on the basis that you have given us your consent to do so. You may withdraw your consent, prior to any work being carried out with you and your family, and your case will be closed but information will still be retained as per the retention policy.
Information required by contract (or information required to enter into a contract)
You are required to provide us with your information to receive this service. The consequences of not providing the information requested are that services will not be able to provide the help and support you and your family need.
Who will your information be shared with?
We sometimes need to share your information within the Council or with other organisations. We will only share your information when necessary and when the law allows us to, and we will only share the minimum information we need to. For Early Help we may need to share your information with: Government departments such as:
The Council will never sell your information to anyone else.
- the Department for Education (DfE)
- Ministry of Housing
- Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)
- the Home Office
- Ofsted and other joint agency inspectorates for the purposes of Children Services Inspections and Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews
- Adult Social Care teams
- Finance departments
- Commissioned partners/contractors who undertake our work
- Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub
- Local Help Your Family Teams
- Health providers, such as the NHS
- Other District/Borough Councils
- Police for the purposes of fraud and crime prevention
- Education providers such as schools that a child attends or has attended
- Other Local Authorities who have contact with a child
- Support services for a child or a parent
- Courts for the purpose of any proceedings in relation to a child or adult; and
- Any other agency responsible for safeguarding children and young people We share your personal information with the above partners and organisation’s as part of our contractual agreements and legal duties as a local authority.
The Council will never sell your information to anyone else.
How long will we keep your information?
We only keep your information for as long as we need to, early help case files and all other information will be securely destroyed 6 years from the date of the last contact.
Your rights
The law gives you specific rights over your information. These rights are:
You can request information about yourself by making a subject access request on this page of the Council’s website.
- to be informed of our use of information about you;
- of access to information about you;
- rectify information about you that is inaccurate;
- to have your information erased (the ‘right to be forgotten’);
- to restrict how we use information about you;
- to move your information to a new service provider;
- to object to how we use information about you;
- not to have decisions made about you on the basis of automated decision making;
- to object to direct marketing; and,
- to complain about anything the Council does with your information (please see the ‘Complaints’ section below).
You can request information about yourself by making a subject access request on this page of the Council’s website.
Changes to this privacy notice
This notice is kept under regular review to make sure it is up to date and accurate.
Data Protection Officer (DPO)
The Council is required by law to have a DPO. The DPO has a number of duties, including:
- monitoring the Council’s compliance with data protection law;
- providing expert advice and guidance on data protection;
- acting as the point of contact for data subjects; and,
- co-operating and consulting with the Information Commissioner’s Office (see ‘Complaints’ below).
Complaints
If you are unhappy with the way in which your information has been handled you should contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer so that we can try and put things right. Alternatively, and if we have been unable to resolve your complaint, you can also refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The ICO is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights, and they can investigate and adjudicate on any data protection related concerns you raise with them. They can be contacted via the methods below:
Website: www.ico.org.uk
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Post: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
The ICO is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights, and they can investigate and adjudicate on any data protection related concerns you raise with them. They can be contacted via the methods below:
Website: www.ico.org.uk
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Post: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
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Last updated: 02 August 2023 08:33:23