Privacy notice for Berkshire Sensory Consortium

Introduction

This privacy notice 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. We are required to give you this information under data protection law. This privacy notice should be read in conjunction with the corporate privacy notice.

Who we are

The Berkshire Sensory Consortium Service is a joint arrangement between six local authorities in Berkshire and is hosted by Achieving for Children on behalf of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Together, the six local authorities, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, West Berkshire, Slough, Wokingham, Reading and Bracknell Forest work to meet the needs of children and young people with sensory impairment from 0-25 years.

The Berkshire Sensory Consortium Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) service is responsible for carrying out duties under the Children and Families Act 2014 in relation to statutory assessment processes, and the ongoing monitoring of children and young people who have SEN support or an Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP).

Additional work outside the remit of the joint arrangement can be commissioned by LA SEND teams and educational settings for specific assessments and advice.

We work in a coordinated way with other children and young people’s services in Achieving for Children and in the six Berkshire Local Authorities as well as with partner organisations to ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for children and young people with sensory impairment, and to ensure we are fully compliant with the Children and Families Act 2014, SEND Code of Practice and the Equality Act 2010.

Achieving for Children is registered as a controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) - Registration number ZA045069.

Personal data we collect

We collect and process personal data in order to assess and plan support for children and young people with a sensory impairment and to provide the most suitable educational provision. We collect personal data via the referral form when children and young people are referred to our service by the following:

health
early years settings
schools or post 16 settings
local authority they are resident

We may also collect personal data from other sources including:

Departments within your local authority such as adult services, children’s social care, education psychology
Health services such as your child’s GP, health visitor, school nurse and other NHS providers
Current and previous schools or post 16 settings
Current and previous early years settings such as nurseries, pre-schools and childminders

We collect:

Personal identifiers and contact details (such as name, NHS number, contact details including home phone, mobile phone, email address and home address details of parents / carers)
We may also collect the young person’s contact email and phone details if age appropriate.
Special category data (such as racial or ethnic origin, information about your physical and health)
Special educational needs details and degree and description of sensory impairment.

How we use your personal data

We hold your personal data securely and use it to:

Identify or clarify the child or young person’s SEND needs
Identify the support they require which will help them to achieve their outcomes
Provide advice to the local authority as part of a statutory needs assessment for an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan
Support the ongoing monitoring of the provision specified in an EHC Plan relating to the young person’s sensory impairment needs
Inform EHC Plan annual review and monitor the young person’s progress
Support disagreement resolution or mediation processes and processes relating to appeals to the Special Educational Need and Disability Tribunal (SENDT)
Respond to complaints or help to resolve any disagreements
Enable coordinated working with other teams and organizations to effectively meet the needs of learners with sensory impairment.
Evaluate and quality assure the services we provide
Analyse service provision and effectiveness, and model patterns of service involvement to support future service delivery planning
Inform future commissioned services.

Legal basis for processing your personal data

We collect and process personal data to comply with our legal obligations as outlined in the Children and Families Act 2014, and to carry out tasks in the public interest. When we collect special category data, we rely upon reasons of substantial public interest (equality of opportunity or treatment), for the provision of social care, or the management of social care systems or services, for social security or social protection law, and for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.

How long your personal data will be kept

Until the young person reaches the age of 25 years
Safeguarding pupil information: date of birth plus 40 years

Keeping your 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.

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.

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. We share your personal data between Achieving for Children departments and services so that we can keep our information up to date, provide cross departmental support and improve our services to you and your child.

Some of the external organisations that we may share your personal information with include:

Other local authorities
Education settings including further education colleges or sixth form colleges, schools, universities or technical colleges
Independent schools and independent specialist providers approved under Section 41 of the Children and Families Act 2014
All early years providers in the maintained, private, voluntary and independent sectors that are funded by the local authority
Relevant Commissioning Boards
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs)
NHS Trusts / NHS Foundation Trusts
Other partner agencies that provide services on our behalf
Agencies with whom we have a duty to cooperate, such as police
Department for Education.

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, or would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, 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/

{{ root_page.title }}