Children's Services privacy notice

Dorset Council Children’s Services in partnership with other Dorset Council departments and other public sector agencies who work to support children, young people, and families. Support is offered within a model of service delivery called Dorset Children Thrive.

Dorset Council Children’s Services aspires to work closely with relevant partners towards the Dorset Model, where all families thrive. This is delivered through Children, Young People and Families' Plan 2023 to 2033 - Dorset Council Children’s Services.

An essential element of facilitating this “gold standard” level of joint delivery is cooperation, co-production of service delivery and maximisation of available (pooled) resources across organisations and in particular the use of additional resources made available through the national Supporting Families Programme (known locally as Dorset Families Matter).

Services are based in six localities:

• Chesil
• Dorchester
• East Dorset
• North Dorset
• Purbeck
• West Dorset

Services based in our localities include:

• Family Help
• Children's Social Care
• Learning and Belonging services. These include Educational Psychology, Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), Inclusion, Early Years and Youth Work

There is an emphasis on supporting people to get the right help from the right part of our system.

Safeguarding concerns are managed by Children's Advice and Duty Service (CHAD).

Family Help link workers will continue to provide guidance, for example with schools.

Appropriate and effective sharing of relevant and available data, across partner organisations, to achieve this joint delivery is central to making informed decisions and ensuring we make the best use of the public money made available.

The information collected by Dorset Council Children’s Services is used to:

• identify families that may benefit from our support
• understand and meet the needs of families
• understand and measure the difference we are making

Families are identified through sharing personal records relating to family members and held by Dorset Council Children’s Services and various public bodies. Only relevant personal data is shared, and access to personal data is restricted to essential personnel who are subject to a professional duty of confidentiality.

The Birth to Settled Adulthood (B2SA) Programme supports young people with special educational needs and disabilities as they move into adult life and adult services. Children’s Services shares personal information with Dorset Council Adult Services to ensure the success of the work of B2SA.

The personal information we may need from you consists of:

• name
• date of birth
• address
• email address
• telephone number(s)
• emergency contact details
• NHS number
• NI number
• education information, including special educational need and disability
• family circumstances and relationships
• identified difficulties or relevant health needs
• details of plans for support and the people involved in these
• records of discussions with or visits made to families and information about their contact with us

In order that we may deliver services appropriate to your needs we may also ask for the following ‘special category’ (sensitive) information about you, which may include:

• race
• ethnic origin
• politics
• religion
• health
• sex life or sexual orientation

To help us provide services appropriate to your needs we may receive personal information about you from others such as:

• family members
• friends
• housing
• education
• other local authorities
• NHS agencies such as GP’s, health visitors, hospitals or mental health
• foster carers and supported lodgings providers
• police
• probation
• prisons
• drug and alcohol services such as REACH
• voluntary service providers
• youth offending service
• legal services
• immigration services
• commissioned partners
• charitable organisations
• family help
• members of the public
• CAFCASS
• other agencies involved

Families are identified through sharing personal records that relate to you that we hold and matching this with information held by several different public bodies. Only relevant information will be shared, and access is restricted to essential personnel who are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Your information will be used for:

• providing family help services
• providing social care services including child protection and children in care services
• planning and improving services to inform decision making and good practice.
• preventing or detecting of crime to safeguard a child
• research and statistical analysis using anonymised personal data. If we wish to use your identifiable personal data, we will seek your permission first
• we may use your contact details to ask you to take part in consultation and engagement processes or research exercise, aimed at helping us measure the effectiveness of our services or develop new services.

We are asked to provide the following information to the DfE (Department of Education) for the purposes of evaluating the impact of the Supporting Families Programme on families assisted through Family Help and social care:

• a small amount of personal information for everyone identified for the purposes of this programme
• progress information for every individual within a family who is being actively supported via Family Help and social care under the programme. The information we share can only be used for conducting research, it will not be used to make any decisions about what benefits you get, or services you use, now, or in the future. It is impossible for any person or family to be identified from any published reports
• data shared with the DfE may be shared with other Government departments such as Ministry of Justice, Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Work and Pensions in a pseudo-anonymised form, to protect the privacy of data subjects

All information is transferred, handled and stored in accordance with GDPR; appropriate measures are in place to prevent unauthorised use of the information.

The lawful basis for us to use your information

Processing of personal data by this service meets the lawfulness condition under Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR (processing in the public interest or necessary to perform our legal functions). Where we process special category data, we must meet an additional condition under Article 9. The relevant condition that this service meets when processing special category data is set out in Article 9(2)(h) – processing necessary for the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health and social care systems and services.

To process data relating to criminal offences, we must meet one of the conditions set out in Article 10 of the UK GDPR. When we process criminal offence data, our processing will meet the condition set out in Article 10(1) - processing of criminal offence data which is authorised by UK law. In accordance with s10(5) of the Data Protection Act 2018, our processing of criminal offence data is authorised by UK law because it meets the condition set out in paragraph 1, schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 - processing necessary for social care purposes.

Some examples of this are:

• protecting children
• preventing serious harm to you or to other people
• the detection or prevention of crime

The laws which set out the council’s legal responsibilities for providing this service are listed below:

• disclosure of information to improve public service delivery and authorised by the Provision of Digital Economy Act 2017
• the general duties of a local authority in relation to well-being of young children and authorized by the Provisions of The Childcare Act 2006
• the Children and Families Act 2014 places a duty on health bodies to bring certain children to the local authority’s attention, where the health body has formed the opinion that the child has (or probably has) special educational needs or a disability
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998 places a duty on key authorities to do all they can to reasonably prevent crime and disorder in their area • Education Act 2002 - duty extends the responsibility of the governing body and maintained schools beyond that of educational achievement and highlights the role of a school in all aspects of the child’s life
• Welfare Reform Act 2012 allows for longer term data sharing powers between DWP, their service providers and local authorities • Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• Local Government Act 2000
• Localism Act 2011
• Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000
• Criminal Justice Act 2003

In some cases we may have to share your personal information with other agencies such as:

• NHS Dorset – the local NHS Commissioner
• Dorset Healthcare Trust – community and mental health services
• NHS foundation acute hospital trusts
• Public Health Dorset
• other Local Authorities - social care
• Government agencies e.g. Department of Work and Pensions, Department of Health and Department for Education
• direct payment providers
• emergency Services
• NHS agencies (such as your GP)
• external services providers as determined and contracted with Dorset Council Children’s Services
• schools, colleges and early years or other educational settings
• Dorset Police, the Ministry of Justice, probation services, and youth offending teams

We will stop using your data as soon as you no longer require our services.

As per the Dorset Council Children’s Services retention schedule - Dorset Council Children’s Services we hold records as evidence of services provided, for example:

• Child in Need up to 25 years
• Child Protection up to 100 years
• children in care 150 years

The retention schedule lists the records created by Dorset Council Children’s Services and the minimum amount of time they must be kept before destruction or transfer to Dorset History Centre.

We hope that our Data Protection Officer can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner.

This privacy notice was originally published on 24 September 2024. When further amendments are made to this page, we will update this section.

We recommend that you review this section from time to time so that you are aware of the latest version of this notice.

Please contact our Data Protection Officer  if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.

If you would like this notice in another format (for example: audio, large print, braille) please contact us.