Children's Services privacy notice

What we do and who we are

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Children’s Services have a duty and responsibility to protect and promote the welfare of children in its area. We aim to provide the right help and support to children and their families at the earliest opportunity possible.

BCP Children’s Services teams work closely with one another, with teams across the Council and with Partner Organisations to provide the appropriate help, support and guidance for children, young people and families. Support is provided from early pregnancy up until the young person reaches the age of 19 years and for some children and care experienced young people, including those who have a disability, up to the age of 25 years.

What we use your personal information for

We only obtain and use the information we need to provide our services to you. During the course of providing support for a child, young person and their family we collect different types of information depending on the circumstances.

We will collect enough personal information to provide you with services, this may include but is not limited for the following purposes:

informing you about alternative services available in the community
protecting children from abuse and harm
monitoring and reviewing support and interventions
identification of children and young people deemed vulnerable and/or at risk of significant harm
carry out data analysis to identify service/community needs
managing delivery of services
management of concerns or complaints
produce statistics

We are not permitted to collect information we do not need or will not use. If we do not need your personal information, we will not ask you for it. If we use your personal information for research or analysis, we will always keep your details anonymous or use a fake name. We will not sell your personal information to anyone else.

The personal information we collect and use

We only obtain and use the information we need to provide our services to you. In the course of providing support for a child, young person and their family we collect different types of information depending on the circumstances.

This may include but is not limited to the following:

personal information; name, address, contact details, date of birth, gender, and personal identifiers for example NHS numbers
family information; family relationships and other data necessary for the provision of services.
assessment and Plans for children, young people and families
information, advice and guidance
information during the process of approving, matching and supporting adoptive parents and assessing special guardians
information gathered during child protection processes and serious case reviews
Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) data
Early Years and Education information
Special Educational Needs and Disability data

Special category personal information: Our service also needs to use sensitive personal data also called "special category data" which requires more protection to keep it safe. This is often information you would not want to be widely known and is very personal to you. It includes:

sexuality or sexual heath
religious or spiritual or philosophical beliefs
ethnicity
physical or mental health
trade union membership
political opinions
genetic or biometric data
criminal history

Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect children from harm
Public task: the processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions and the task or function has a clear basis in law

Health or social care: the processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and service.

Public interest: the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest
Legal purposes: the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity

The law we use to process your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations, and to carry out tasks in the public interest. If we need to collect special category (sensitive) personal information, 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.

Statutory legislation

The main legislation that provides us with the statutory basis to deliver our services are as follows:

The Education Act, 1996, 2002, 2005
Learning and Skills Act 2000
Education and Skills Act 2008
Education and Inspections Act 2006
Academies Act 2010
Education and Adoption Act 2016
Crime and Disorder Act, 1998, 2004
Working together to Safeguard Children 2015
Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984 (PACE)
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, 2012
The Localism Act, 2011
Homelessness Reduction Act, 2017
Children Act 1989 and 2004
Childcare Act 2006 Section 99 of the Childcare Act 2006 and The Education (Provision of Information About Young Children) (England) Regulations 2009)
Children and Families Act 2014
Children and Social Work Act 2017
Data Protection Act 2018
Digital Economy Act 2017
Transport Act 1985
SEND Regulations 2014
Special Education Needs and Disability Code of Practice 0-25 years, 2015
Equality Act 2010
Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000
Children and Adoption Act 2006
Early Years Census
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Articles 6 and 9 and associated regulations or statutory guidance

Consent

We have a statutory duty to exercise our legal obligations under section 47 of the Children’s Act 1989 where consent is not required in order to safeguard vulnerable children. If a child is accommodated and then returned; the withdrawal of consent does not affect our legal obligation to retain the child’s record and use the information should further concerns come to light.

Where you have been asked to provide your consent to processing you can withdraw it at any time. If you wish to withdraw your consent, please contact or talk to the officer in the Council who has been providing the service or services to you. If you do not have an officer that you have regular contact with, please make your request to withdraw consent to our Customer Services team.

Remember to tell us which service or services your request applies to, so that we know who to send it to within the Council.

Who we may share your information with

We may share your information but is not limited to the following:

Category	Services
Local Authority	Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), other Service areas within the Council working with the child and family, *Commissioned providers of local authority services such as Independent Foster Care Agencies, Children’s Homes, Semi-Independent accommodation Providers, Supported Lodgings Providers, Residential Special Schools and Secure accommodation.
Legal	Police, Probation, the Court Services, Legal Services, Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal Service, British Transport Police, Dorset Youth Offending Service (https://www.bournemouth.gov.uk/Privacy/dorset-combined-youth-offending-service.aspx), Department of Barring Services (DBS) https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/disclosure-and-barring-service.
Children’s	CAFCASS, NSPCC (https://www.nspcc.org.uk/), Child Protection Information (CPIS), Aspire Adoption (https://aspireadoption.co.uk/), In-house providers of social care services (e.g. foster carers and short breaks), Pan Dorset Safeguarding and YMCA.
Health	Provide Child Health Information Service, Health Visitors, Midwives, National Health Service, GP/Doctor, Dorset Care Record, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), Health Care and Professions Council (HCPC), Community Mental Health Team, School nurses, Other health and mental health workers.
Education	Academies and Schools (including Virtual Schools) Early Years providers, Welfare Call Ltd, Alternative provision suppliers, transport services (e.g. SEND transport)
Government Departments	Department for Works and Pensions (DWP), Department for Education (DfE), Ministry of Housing, Communities, Local Government, Ministry of Justice, Ofsted, Home Office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
Financial and Housing	Housing Associations, Financial Services, Housing Services.
Other services providing support	Advocacy Services, Other Local Authorities, the Share Foundation, Other Voluntary Services, Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Service, Sharing and Rescue Service, Partner organisations signed up to the Dorset Pledge, Dorset Intelligence and Insight Service (DiiS), Third Party organisations commissioned by BCP Council for ad hoc projects.

*Where services are commissioned, the provider would be a processor of information and also be a controller in their own right, where they collect information for their own purpose.

Your information will not be disclosed to any other organisations, except where we are required and allowed to by law.

We may seek your consent if we are able to offer additional services which we believe are of benefit to you. This will be clearly communicated to you. We will only share your details with these organisations if we have your consent. However, we will share information with the other organisation if we believe:

a child would be harmed if we did not share this information
to find and stop crime and fraud
if there may be serious risks to the public, our staff or to other professionals

We use a range of organisations to either store personal information or to help deliver our services to you. Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide your personal information to other organisations, for example the court service or Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

How long we keep information about you

Category	Retention Period
Children and young people with a child protection plan	Date of case closure +35 years
Children and young people who have been in the care of the local authority and young people with care experience	Date of birth +75 years
Fostering and Private Fostering arrangements	Date of birth +75 years
Child Health and Disability records	+25 years
Children’s Complaints	10 years
Child work permits	7 years
Admissions data	7 years in accordance with The Limitation Act 1980
All other records relating to children and young people. Records of children and young people who don’t fall into any of the above categories, including Children in Need and general papers where a statutory file has not been opened	Date of birth + 25 years
Register of persons posing a risk to children and those cautioned or convicted of offences against children	Date of birth 100 years
Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) data	10 years
Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) records	70 years
Early Education Funding (retention is in accordance with Financial Regulations)	7 years
Serious Case Reviews Pan-Dorset Safeguarding Children Partnership	35 years
Early Years Portage and Special Educational Needs (SEND)	25 years
Nursery and childcare records Childminders records	25 years 7 years
Pupils attending BCP Schools (with no contact with SEND, Childrens Social Care)	7 years after leaving school
Management of educational welfare support and school exclusions data Free school meals	25 years 7 years
Virtual School (as required by the Independent Inquiry into Child Abuse (IICSA) https://www.iicsa.org.uk) Virtual school pupil data	95 years 75 years

Caldicott Guardian, Children’s Services

A Caldicott Guardian is a senior person responsible for protecting the confidentiality of people’s health and care information.

The Caldicott Guardian for Children’s Services is Rachel Gravett, Service Director Quality, Performance Improvement and Governance.