Privacy notice for Special Educational Needs and Disability Service

Introduction

This privacy notice explains what types of personal data we may hold about you, how we collect it, how we use 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

Achieving for Children is a community interest company created in 2014 by the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and London Borough of Richmond to provide children’s services. In August 2017 the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead became co-owner of Achieving for Children.

Achieving for Children delivers children’s services and the local authority statutory responsibilities relating to children aged up to 25 years across the boroughs of Kingston, Richmond and Windsor and Maidenhead. 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 that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

The 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 Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP). This includes information and advice sought for annual review, tracking information, disagreement resolution or mediation processes and processes relating to appeals to the Special Educational Need and Disability Tribunal (SENDT).

We work in a coordinated way with other children and young people’s services in Achieving for Children and with partner organisations to ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for children and young people with SEND in our boroughs, and to ensure we are fully compliant with the Children and Families Act 2014 and SEND Code of Practice.

Personal data we collect

In order to assess and plan SEND support and provide the most suitable education provision, we collect the following personal information when you provide it:

personal identifiers and contact details (such as name, NHS number, contact details and address, details of parent/carers)
special category data (such as racial or ethnic origin, information about your physical and health)
special educational needs details

We also obtain information from other sources:

other organisations or teams that can provide us with advice and information (such as Adult Services, Children’s Social Care Services, Educational Psychology Service, GPs, School Nurses, Health Visitors and other NHS providers)
schools or post 16 settings currently or previously attended
early years education providers currently or previously attended such as nurseries, pre-schools and childminders

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:

identify or clarify the child or young person’s SEND needs
identify the support they require which will help them to achieve their outcomes
make decisions about whether to conduct a statutory needs assessment or issue an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan
make decisions about the content of an EHC Plan including outcomes, placement and provision
support the ongoing monitoring of the provision specified in an EHC Plan where one is issued
inform EHC Plan annual review and monitor your child’s progress
support disagreement resolution or mediation processes and processes relating to appeals to the Special Educational Need and Disability Tribunal (SENDT)
help to resolve any disagreements
enable coordinated working with other teams and organisations
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 and educational placements requirements

Lawful 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. If we need to 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

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

other local authorities (education, social care, health, employment and other relevant services)
schools, including non-maintained special schools
further education colleges and sixth form colleges
academies (including free schools, universities, technical colleges)
pupil referral units
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
Youth Offending Teams and relevant youth custodial establishments
the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability)
other third-party organisations, as allowed by law
other partner agencies that provide services on our behalf
agencies with whom we have a duty to co-operate, 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/

AfC/SEND/PN/2020v.2

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