Privacy notice for Children’s Centres

What do we use the information for?

Children’s Centres use information about children, young people and their families who receive a service, to carry out specific functions for which we have responsibility, for example:

• Support children, young people and their families; and monitor their progress
• Managing and planning overall service delivery
• Performance management of children, young people and their families services
• Managing information systems supporting children, young people and family services
• Providing early help services for families including vulnerable children and young people
• Working with other organisations to support the health and wellbeing of children, young people and their families, including sharing information and commissioning services
• Supporting families with information and access to local Children’s Centre services
• Enabling Children’s Centres to identify and target support to those families who do not currently access the centres at a point in life when they need the most support and where early intervention has the highest impact.
• Identifying those families who need support as part of an integrated approach to prevention, early intervention and working together to safeguard children
• To provide a service that improves outcomes for children, young people and their families through providing a range of universal and preventative services.
• Helping to prevent duplication of services
• To contact you regularly to promote our What’s On programme and to let you know about Children’s Centre activities which may be of interest to you. We will also email helpful advice on parenting and raising children.  You can stop receiving this information at anytime.
• Referrals are received from parents and carers, health visitors, midwives, schools and other agencies or from East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Safeguarding and Partnership Hub (SaPH). 
  

What information do we hold and use?

Children’s Centres collect and process the following information:  

• Personal information of primary and secondary carer and children such as name, date of birth, address and contact details. We also hold identifiable information such as NHS numbers

• Characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, disability, home circumstances, language and health information
• Significant people in the family, and their details
• Any additional personal information that is necessary for us to assess and provide children, young people and families with the service they require

In order to evidence change for families your data is fed into the National Impact Survey which also uses information collected by:

• NHS and health organisations
  
• Department of Work and Pensions
  
• Police
  
• Ministry of Justice
  
• Probation Services.

National Impact Survey   

This study will look at the progress of families who have worked with East Riding Children’s Services, compared with those who haven’t worked with us but have been identified as eligible to receive support in:

• Increasing school attendance
  
• Getting people ready/into work
  
• Reducing offending/anti-social behaviour
  
• Reducing incidents of domestic violence/abuse
  
• Helping families to access support for health concerns and substance misuse
  
• Reducing the number of children being assessed as requiring help
  

It is important for you to know that your personal data (Name, date of birth and address) will be sent to a research organisation, the Office for National Statistics, who will link it with the information from the previously mentioned departments/agencies.

The information is then anonymised and sent to the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government who use the data to measure the impact of work done by local councils with families. You cannot be identified from the information sent.

The personal data gathered and combined by the National Office of Statistics cannot be shared with East Riding of Yorkshire Council, so it is not used to make any decisions about the support you currently receive and it will not affect any benefits or services that you may be entitled to. Your personal data will be destroyed at the end of the research period.

On what grounds do we use the information?

Children’s Centres collect and lawfully process information about children and families to whom we provide services to under the following:

• Children Act 1989 (section 17 and 47)
  
• Children Act 2004 (section 10 and 11)
  
• Children and Families Act 2014
  
• Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015
  
• The Human Rights Act (Article 8)
  
• The Common Law Duty of Confidentiality
  
• Caldicott Principles
  
• Ofsted. 

We process personal data for the following reasons:

• Processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of you or of another person   

• Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council. 

We process special categories data for the following reasons:

• You have given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes
  
• Processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or of another person where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent. 

In some cases we may need your explicit consent to process your personal data, if we do we will always make this clear.

Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, on the basis of Union or Member State law which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject.

How do we collect this information?

Children’s Centres collect personal information as part of the process of providing Children Centre services for children, young people and their families.  

Information will be collected from:

• Children’s Centre registration forms and mini registration forms
  
• From midwifery and health visiting services in accordance with the principles and standards defined in the Humber Information Sharing Charter
  
• Through contact with individual families such as face to face meetings, over the telephone, by letter and email.  
  
• Relevant partner agencies as part of an integrated approach to prevention, early intervention and working together to safeguard children. 

Who do we share your information with?

Children Centres may share relevant information within the East Riding of Yorkshire Council to support children young people and their families.  Services might include:

• Children’s social care
  
• Youth and family support
  
• Housing services
  
• Education inclusion services
  
• Welfare rights
  
• Revenues and benefits
  
• Customer relations team
  
• Portage. 

In addition to sharing within the Council information about children, young people and their families to deliver best services, it may sometimes also be necessary to share information with external organisations. These organisations might include:

• Health Services (School nurses, GPs, consultants)
  
• Schools and Academies
  
• Police
  
• Probation services
  
• Midwifery and Health Visiting as part of the Healthy Child Programme and the East Riding Integrated Care Pathways
• Department for work and pensions.
  

We will not give information about you to anyone outside of East Riding of Yorkshire Council unless required to do so by law in delivering our statutory functions, or such as actions are necessary for safeguarding children or to deliver the services which you have requested.

How long do we store it and is it secure?

The council has retention schedules in place to ensure that information is only held for as long as it is needed. For information on how long your information will be held visit the retention page. 

Details of how we keep your information secure are available on the general privacy information page.

East Riding of Yorkshire Council has a contract with Quality Education Solutions to provide a Data Hub for the Supporting Families programme.  Data supplied to the East Riding of Yorkshire Council will also be stored in the data hub which is a hosted, maintained and supported application, provided by their hosting partners, Rackspace. Rackspace conforms to ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and is NHS IG Toolkit accredited.

What rights do you have?

The rights that you have depend upon the grounds upon which we collected your information. In most cases, people who have been involved with East Riding Children’s Centres will have the following rights: 

• The right of access - You are entitled to see the information the service holds about you and can request a copy by emailing data.protection@eastriding.gov.uk 
• The right to rectification - If you believe any information the service holds about you to be incorrect please contact your local children’s centre
• The right to erasure/ right to be forgotten - The service has determined that all requests to permanently delete a service user record will be dealt with on an individual basis. In the first instance you should speak with your local Children's Centre, however official requests should be logged with data.protection@eastriding.gov.uk
• The right to restrict processing - Should you wish the service to limit how we use your data, in the first instance you should speak with your local Children's Centre, however official requests should be logged with data.protection@eastriding.gov.uk
• The right to object - In addition to the right to limit the use of your data, you also have a right to object to the use of your data for certain actions for example, our emailed What’s On programme. Should you wish to object please contact your local Children’s Centre.

Where can I find out more?

If you want to know more about how the council uses information, your rights or have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, we request that you raise your concern with us in the first instance.  Contact details are available on the  general privacy information page.  Alternatively, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Visit the privacy notice page to view the Children's Centre privacy notice.

For further information about children’s centre services please visit the Children's Centres page.