Cambridgeshire County Council discharges many of its responsibilities to support children and young people (CYP) in Cambridgeshire through its Children’s and Safeguarding service. This sits within our People and Communities directorate and includes the delivery of:
- Early Help – including services delivered through Child and Family Centres and the provision of family support services, career and post-16 services and Educational Welfare services
- Safeguarding – including services for children in need of help or protection, those looked after by the Local Authority and those who have left Local Authority care
Our responsibilities as a Local Authority in regard to children and young people living in Cambridgeshire are described in The Children Acts, The Children and Families Act 2017 and other pieces of legislation summarised in statutory guidance “Working Together to Safeguard Children”. We have a legal duty to collect and process information where this is necessary to prevent harm to a child and we are required to work with other organisations to support the health and wellbeing of children and young people. We are also required to plan, monitor and maintain the quality of our services.
In order to carry out these tasks in the public interest we collect and process information about children, young people and their family members as described below. The staff who have access to your information use it only as they need to in order to do their jobs and with strict regard to your privacy. We also process information about professionals working with children and families or who are involved in planning and delivering services in partnership with us. This information might include contact details and records of training or recruitment.
In Cambridgeshire we always take a “whole family” approach to working with children, young people and their carers in order to provide support as effectively as possible. This approach usually involves a family having a named “lead professional” who is responsible for co-ordinating their support.
What information do we hold
The Council collects and processes personal information about all children who attend an education setting in Cambridgeshire. Further information about how we handle information about children who attend schools and settings in Cambridgeshire can be found in our Education Service Privacy Notice. The Education Service notice also covers the work we do to provide advice and guidance to young people in regard to education training and employment opportunities.
When you request or engage with support from our Childrens and Safeguarding Services we also record information about:
- Family circumstances and relationships,
- Identified difficulties or relevant health needs (such as whether a parent smokes)
- 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, such as attendances at groups or courses
- Records of discussions about you that we have with other people as part of your support
- Children’s NHS numbers.
If you are receiving support from Children Social Care then the NHS may share your NHS number with Children Social Care. By using the same number the NHS and Children Social Care can work together more closely to improve your care and support. We will use this Number in an integrated care record system across a number of support services including GP’s, hospitals, community matrons, district nurses and social care practitioners. If you wish to opt-out from the use of your NHS Number for social care purposes, please talk with your social worker)
This information is gathered from children, young people, their family members and other professionals who know them. We need this information in order to provide you with services you have requested, have consented to receive or that we are required by law to provide you with. Your signature on or participation in an assessment of need, or support plan such as an Early Help Assessment, Family Support Plan or Single Assessment, or a referral to our services indicates to us that you want to receive a service from us.
If you are registered with, or have accepted or helped us deliver services at our Child and Family Centres or from any of our District or Safeguarding teams we will provide you with information about these services on a regular basis but if you do not wish to be on our circulation lists please let us know.
Who we share information with, and why
When you are receiving support from us we will share information with other agencies where this will enable us to provide you with the best support possible. You should be made aware of who we are sharing information with as part of your support. Depending on circumstances the agencies we might share information about you with are
- Education Providers
- Health Agencies (Our statutory functions include responsibility for Public Health and may require the sharing of relevant information with bodies such as the NHS and voluntary organisations to support the health, wellbeing and care needs of children and young people.)
- Voluntary Service Providers
- Police
- Probation services
- Youth Offending Service
- Legal Services, for example in regard to court proceedings for looked after children
- Other Local Authorities or District Councils
We will always inform other professionals who work with children and families who your “lead professional” is if they enquire. This is make sure that you have to tell your story only once and to prevent you having to take part in numerous different assessments.
Similarly to all Local Authorities we participate in a national programme to demonstrate the impact of whole family support and to claim and receive funds for our services from the government. When children are referred to us for support we ask our local partner organisations to help us identify whether their family might qualify for inclusion in our Supporting Families (SF) programme. To do this a restricted and small number of staff share information with
- Department of Work and Pensions and local Jobcentre Plus for them to confirm back to us whether an adult is receiving out of work benefits. To do this we keep a record of relevant National Insurance Numbers
- With housing providers, for them to confirm whether a family has stable housing and District Councils to confirm whether a family has presented as homeless or been in temporary accommodation
- With the police, to identify whether anyone in the family has been involved in incidents of anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse and whether there has been any call out to the family home for any reason.
We include any families who meet the criteria for this programme, in the programme cohort. Meeting the criteria for being included in the programme does not affect the type of support a family gets. We work with all families in the same way whether their circumstances mean we can include them in the programme or not.
We share information we hold about families who are included in our SF programme with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. This is for the purposes of a national evaluation with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Further information about this is available at the end of this privacy notice.
We collect and analyse feedback from people who use the services we commission or deliver but no-one will be identified in any research or analysis based on this and which we share with partners or make publicly available.
We will not give information about you to anyone outside the Council without your consent unless required to do so by law, to deliver our statutory functions, or to deliver the services which you have requested. We have a legal duty to collect, process and share information with our partners where this is necessary to prevent harm to a child or to prevent a crime.
If you ask us not to share information we will always try to respect your wishes but in some circumstances this may limit the services we can offer you.
How long do we keep information for?
Different services retain information about the people they support, for different lengths of time but we keep information for only as long as it is needed. This will be based on either a legal requirement (where a law says we have to keep information for a specific period of time) or accepted business practice. We continue to record information about all families throughout their support and will keep this information for at least 2 years after our contact with them stops. This is so that we can evaluate the impact of our services locally and plan future services with our partners.
Social care records are usually kept for at least 25 years.
Your Rights
Under Data Protection Legislation you have the following rights:
- Right of access (to receive a copy of your personal data)
- Right to rectification (to request data is corrected inaccurate)
- Right to erasure (to request that data is deleted)
- Right to restrict processing (to request we don’t use your data in a certain way)
- Right to data portability (in some cases, you can ask to receive a copy of your data in a commonly-used electronic format so that it can be given to someone else)
- Right to object (generally to make a complaint about any aspect of our use of your data)
- Right to have explained if there will be any automated decision-making, including profiling, based on your data and for the logic behind this to be explained to you.
Any such request can be submitted to the Data Protection Officer. Whether we can agree to your request will depend on the specific circumstances and if we cannot then we will explain the reasons why.
If you are unhappy with any aspect of how your information has been collected and/or used, you can make a complaint to the Data Protection Officer.
You can also report your concerns to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
To contact our Data Protection Officer
Email: Data.protection@cambridgeshire.gov.uk Phone: 01223 699137.
Post: Information Governance Team, Cambridgeshire County Council, Box No. SCO2306, Scott House, 5 George Street, Huntingdon, PE29 3AD
NHS National Data Opt-out
Alongside your Right to Object (see “Your Rights” below), the NHS National Data Opt-out Programme gives you the right to opt out of your confidential patient information being used for reasons other than their individual care and treatment (such as for research and planning purposes).
