Privacy notice for Children's Social Care

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.

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

AfC’s Children’s Social Care Service has a wide range of responsibilities to children and young people within the local area. We hold personal data about children and young people who are in our statutory care whether as looked after children, or under a child protection plan as are deemed at risk and or any unborn children with a pre-birth child protection plan.

We also hold personal data because we provide a range of services to children, young people and their families in order to safeguard and promote their welfare.

Personal data we collect

We collect and process the following personal data:

personal identifiers and contact details (such as name, unique pupil number, NHS number, contact details and address, details of family and close relations).
special category data (such as racial or ethnic origin, sex life or sexual orientation, and health information).
safeguarding information (such as court orders and professional involvement, child in care status including looked after or previously looked after early help, social care and health).
special educational needs, including the needs and ranking, for example pastoral support plan (PSP), education, health and care plan (EHCP), Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support plan, personal education plan (PEP), employment and education).
school attendance, achievements, exclusion and behavioural information.
details and records of your child’s care, support, wellbeing and any concerns or investigations.
details of each contact that we have with you and your child, including visits, correspondence, communications and documents.
relevant information from individuals involved in your child’s care, including health and other care providers, carers and relatives.
youth offending information: offences (including alleged offences), criminal proceedings, convictions and sentences.
information about your situation given to us by your family, carers and other organisations such as general practitioner, police and schools.

How we use your personal data

We use information about children, young people and their families to meet our legal obligations and responsibilities. We hold the information securely and use it to:

carry out our statutory functions and duties including safeguarding, child protection, children and young people at risk of offending and corporate parenting.
carry out our statutory functions and duties including services to children and young people in care and care leavers
provide you and your family with early help, advice and appropriate services.
provide a coordinated approach to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children to ensure you receive the right support at the right time.
inform targeted support and services to families, children and young people who are most in need and at risk of harm
identify children as part of the CP-IS (Child Protection – Information Sharing) programme
identify families eligible for inclusion in the Troubled Families Programme and monitor their progress as part of the programme.
support you to access relevant support and advice, services and groups, including supporting parents with parenting and with their drug and alcohol use
help us teach, train and monitor our staff to develop good practice in the services received.
evaluate and quality assure the services we provide, and improve our policies on children’s social care
to audit and 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

Legal basis for processing your personal data

The legal basis we rely on for processing you and your child’s personal data are public task or to comply with a legal obligation. If we need to collect special category data, we rely upon reasons of substantial public interest (safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk, and 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. These legal bases are underpinned by acts of legislation that dictate what actions can and should be taken by local authorities, including:

Children and Families Act 2014
Children’s Act 1989
Children’s Act 2004
Adoption and Children Act 2002
Children and Social Work Act 2017
Children and Young Persons Act 2008
Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010
Human Rights Act 1998
Equalities Act 2010

How long your personal data will be kept

We only keep your personal data for as long as is required by law and in accordance with our retention schedule.

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 with these organisations 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 organisations that we share data with include (but aren’t limited to) the following:

Government departments including Department for Education, Department of Works and Pensions and Department of Health.
Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted)
Care Quality Commission (CQC)
Metropolitan Police (Kingston and Richmond)
Thames Valley Police (Windsor and Maidenhead)
Health services including GPs, NHS Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)
Youth Offending and Probation services
Education providers and schools
Housing services
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)
Targeted Support services
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service
Commissioned care and or health services

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
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/

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