Children and families services (education) privacy notice - Privacy notices

This privacy notice incorporates behaviour support, business intelligence, early help, early years improvement, early years school improvement, educational psychology, home and hospital tuition (H3), independent travel training, learning and achievement, post 16 learning and skills, SEND Partnership, sensory and physical impairment, schools admissions, children not engaging in education panel, the attendance and engagement team social inclusion and safeguarding, special educational needs, troubled families, virtual HT and LAC education.

To make informed decisions regarding the safety and wellbeing of a child or young person and to make appropriate services available to you, it is necessary for us to collect and hold personal information about you. This information may relate to you, your family and any other persons in your household. Data will include:

• Basic details about you and your family such as address, telephone number, email address, NHS number and National Insurance number (where relevant to early years settings in receipt of Early Years Pupil Premium and/or free school meals)
• Where relevant personal sensitive information such as religion, ethnic origin, disability status, education, marital status, offences (including alleged offences), criminal record, parenting styles and behaviours, substance use, employment details
• Where relevant, information relating to schools and further education and training providers attended and training provided to you (including apprenticeships)
• All additional support provided to you or your child in relation to your or their educational development
• All educational attendance, any exclusion history, future education and training plans (up to age 18 or 25 if have an EHCP)
• Contact we have had with you, or your child such as home visits and meetings
• Assessments and reports and correspondence regarding you and your family both written by us and provided by third party agencies

The third party agencies referred to above may include health professionals, police, educational establishments, advocacy services and any other organisation with whom you are currently or historically been involved with.

All personal data held, is processed in accordance with data protection law. The data controller for the information outlined in this privacy notice is Herefordshire Council.

Where joint data controllers are identified as part of providing services to you, you will be made aware of this.

Hoople Ltd are the data processors who will process your financial information on behalf of the council.

We will collect information about you, your family and those living in your home (where applicable):

• To make informed decisions regarding the safety and wellbeing of a child or young person
• To provide a statutory service for provision of care for all children
• To keep children safe and to meet the needs of the child
• To identify and support children and young people in their educational and training setting

The legal basis for processing the data is our legal obligation for social care provision, and the necessity for performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the social care department.

The statutory legal obligation is covered by a variety of legislation which includes:

• The Children Act 1989, 1996, 2004 and 2006
• Children and Families Act 2014
• Education Act 1996 and 2011
• Education and Skills Act 2008
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998
• Offender Management Act
• School Discipline Regulations 2012
• Regulations of Welfare Reform Act 2012
• Localism Act 2011
• Domestic Violence, Crime Victims Act 2004
• Local Authority Social Services Act 1970
• Promoting the education of looked after children and previously looked after children (statutory guidance for local authorities February 2018)
• Schools admissions code
• The SEND code of practice

Where the legal basis for processing information about you, your family and those who live in your home is by consent, you can withdraw this at any time by notifying us. If, however, any concerns are raised to a significant level it will be necessary for us to apply our statutory legal obligation to your child and process information without your consent. Where possible we will advise you that our concerns have reached this level.

We may share information about you or your family with partner organisations where relevant and appropriate or where safeguarding concerns are raised. These organisations may include:

• Health professionals such as GPs, school nurses, community nurses, hearing or visual impairment services, speech and language therapy (SALT). Where relevant this may also include specialist health professionals who may be currently involved with you, your family and any other person living in your home, or those to whom a referral is being made on your behalf. This may include specialist mental health services, psychologist
• Police may be approached for relevant information to enable appropriate decisions to be made about the safety and security of you, your family and any other person living in your home. This will include full disclosures of criminal history and sentencing. Sensitive information will only be shared if it is relevant
• Educational establishments including nurseries, schools and further education and training providers such as colleges. Information gathered will include attendance and achievement records, wellbeing and behavioural issues and relationships with you, your family and any other person living in your home
• Advocacy services where this is relevant to comply with our legal responsibility to ensure that your child is appropriately supported
• If you tell us that you and your family are currently working with any other organisations we will approach them for information to ensure that we have a full picture of the current and historical situation for you and your family. This may include youth offending teams, domestic violence services, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)
• All relevant departments within our own authority such as family support services, social care teams, adult services, educational psychology, hearing and visual impairment services, physical disability service. Some services may not be internal to the authority and may be completed under contract so information will be provided to the services to enable them to fulfil their contract and provide services to you. For example Hoople for finance services for the council.
• Where your care provision requires relief or short break care, your details will be provided to ensure appropriate levels of service are maintained for you and your family
• If there are any concerns of a safeguarding nature and you have moved from our area, we may be contacted by your new local authority and social work teams. We will share relevant information with them
• Subject to strict agreements describing how it will be used, the information we gather may be shared with any of the multi-agency professionals working with you and your family or those to whom we make a referral on your behalf
• Where appropriate your data will be used to produce performance statistics for the local authority and submitted in line with statutory guidelines

If there are no safeguarding concerns, we will not normally share your information with organisations other than our partner organisations without your consent. However, there may be certain circumstances where we would share without consent such as where we are required to do so by law, to safeguard public safety, and in risk of harm or emergency situations. We will only share the minimum information for the purpose, on a need to know basis and with appropriate individuals.

We will only keep your information for the minimum period necessary. All information will be held securely and destroyed under confidential conditions. The information outlined in this privacy notice will be kept as detailed below. If the information held falls into more than one category, we will keep the file for the longer period.

The entire record for the child or young person will be retained for the maximum retention period relevant for that file. If you would like further clarification on how retention periods are applied, please discuss this with your worker.

You have a number of rights under data protection law, including the right to request your information and to request that the information is amended or erased if incorrect.

We can rectify mistakes, however, where your opinion of the information held on record differs from that of the professional, this may be recorded as an addendum to the report. Your opinion will be shared whenever the report is shared, however the report can only be amended where there is a factual inaccuracy.

To request an amendment or erasure of your information, please contact the author of the report in question or contact the information governance team as detailed below.

To request your records, you will need to provide proof of identification and write to the Information Governance Team, Herefordshire Council, Plough Lane, Hereford HR4 0LE or email informationgovernance@herefordshire.gov.uk

You also have the right to make a complaint about our handling of your personal data to the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you have any questions or concerns about how your information is used, please contact the relevant team in the first instance.

You can also contact the Data Protection Officer, Herefordshire Council, Plough Lane, Hereford HR4 0LE, email informationgovernance@herefordshire.gov.uk

You can find more information about data protection and how it applies to you on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

• Family support section
• Managing pupil and performance information
• Schools and education section