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Privacy notice for Early Help Hub

Introduction

This privacy notice relates to the Windsor and Maidenhead Early Help Hub and explains what types of personal data we may hold about you, how we collect it, how we use it and who we may share information with.  It should be read in conjunction with the corporate privacy notice which provides more detail about how we collect and process personal data as an organisation.

Achieving for Children is registered as a controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) - registration number ZA045069 - and is committed  to being transparent about how it collects and uses personal data and to meeting its data protection obligations. 

The Early Help Offer in the borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is designed to help children, young people and families access early support and we will always aim to make it as accessible as possible. Early help services provide preventative support to children, young people and families. The delivery of early help to families is not a statutory requirement by law and therefore you will always have a choice whether you wish to receive early help.

Personal data we collect

We collect and process the  personal information below through the referrals to the  Early Help Hub or directly from children and families: 

  • Name
  • Date of birth
  • Address
  • Marital status
  • Employment status
  • Sex
  • Contact details
  • Ethnicity
  • Health information
  • School attendance and exclusion information 
  • Safeguarding information
  • Criminal offence data 
  • Referral reasons and any additional information that is necessary to enable us to provide you with the correct service.

How we use your information

We use the personal  information we collect about you for the following purposes: 

  • To ensure appropriate, timely and safe support is provided to you and your family
  • Discuss new referrals at the weekly Early Help Hub meeting 
  • monitor and improve the effectiveness of our policies and the support we deliver  
  • to audit and or to improve our services to ensure they meet you and your child’s needs. 
  • assess performance and set targets for service improvement
  • complete statistical returns to Government departments
  • account for our decisions and investigate complaints
  • help us teach, train and monitor our staff to develop good practice in the services received.

Lawful basis for processing your personal data

Families have a choice about whether or not to receive early help so the service will only accept referrals where you have provided explicit consent for a referral to the Early Help Hub. Your practitioner will discuss this choice with you from the outset to help you decide whether to work with early help services. 

If you agree to receive early help, we will collect and use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations and to carry out tasks in the public interest. For Special Category Personal the legal basis will be substantial public interest. These basis are underpinned by the following legislation:

  • Children’s Act 1989
  •  The Children Act 2004, section 11
  •  Statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018

Who we share your personal information with

We will only share information where it is appropriate and legal to do so. Where this is necessary, we are required to comply with all aspects of the Data Protection Act 2018.

Depending on the individual circumstances of each situation, we may have to share this information with other teams within Achieving for Children to fulfil other duties and powers to support our work. Partner agencies included are:

  • Children’s Social Care Services
  • Thames Valley Police
  • Health services
  • Probation services
  • Education and schools
  • Housing services
  • Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)
  • Getting Help Team
  • Family Hubs
  • Youth Offending services
  • Berkshire voluntary organisations

We may at times share information with our Commissioners (Windsor and Maidenhead Council).

How long will we keep your information

Records will be retained until the child’s 25th birthday (unless looked after, adopted, SEN, child protection).

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Achieving for Children’s email service has been configured to Government Digital Service and we encrypt and authenticate email in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC). We will ensure that when we send emails containing your personal information they are sent using appropriate security measures to encrypt the data in transit. This may involve the use of a third party encryption tool where appropriate.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Your rights and access to information

Under data protection legislation you have the right to request access to the information that we hold about you. To request a copy of your data, please read the Individual Rights Requests page and then submit your request using your preferred method of contact.

You also have the right to:

  • object to processing of personal data that is likely to cause, or is causing, damage or distress
  • have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed
  • prevent processing for the purpose of direct marketing object to decisions being taken by automated means
  • in certain circumstances have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed; and 
  • a right to seek redress, either through the ICO, or through the courts

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we process personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer: [email protected]

If you want to make a complaint about how we handle your personal data, we ask that you give our Data Protection Officer the opportunity to respond in the first instance but you are not obliged to do this. You can make a complaint directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/