Integrated Social Care Privacy Notice

The Trust provides and commissions a range of support, care and protection services for children and their families. To provide these services, the Trust needs to collect and hold information about you.

This Privacy Notice is designed to help you understand how we use personal information when delivering our statutory children's services, what information we collect from you, what we do with it and who it might be shared with.

Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in overarching Trust Privacy notice.

Why do we collect this information?

We need to process your data in order to ensure that the services we are providing are fit for purpose, efficient and effective whilst meeting our statutory and legal obligations. The information is being collected for the following purposes:

To assess individual needs of the child / children (and family), plan and provide the most appropriate level of support to the child and the family. This includes undertaking our statutory duties to refer young people and families as required to local housing authorities to reduce homelessness
To support children (and their families) to manage the health and wellbeing of the child or young person by enabling integrated working with other Trust Services teams and organisations to ensure the child / children receive the right support at the right time
To support the child to access relevant support and advice, services and groups, including supporting parents with parenting and with their drug and alcohol use
To protect child/ children who may be at risk of harm including safeguarding and supporting the child / children, and to monitor their progress
To assist the court with providing assessments and information as required
To better plan and analyse the service provision and effectiveness, and model patterns of service involvement to support future service delivery planning. From time to time we evaluate and quality assure the services we provide and improve our policies on children’s social care. This will include seeking the children’s feedback on the services the child and the family has received

What services are covered by this privacy notice?

Children’s social care in Birmingham is provided by Birmingham Children’s Trust and comprises a range of services that offer specialist support to children, young people and families. Support is provided by children’s social work teams and other statutory support services such as:

Service Name	Purpose of using your information
Assessment & Short Term Intervention (ASTI)	To determine whether a child is suffering from significant harm, determine the child's needs and risks, and what support plan is required.
CASS (Children’s Advice & Support Service)	To provide advice and support to children, young people, and their families, and to help safeguard their welfare. A decision needs to be made within 24 hours in line with Right Help Right Time around where to refer the family for this support.
MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub)	To enable the MASH to identify and manage risk to children and to ensure appropriate interventions are put in place.
EDT (Emergency Duty Team)	Used when contacts are taken from public and professionals when information is sought outside of normal office hours where support might be needed. A decision is made in line with the Right Help Right Time document or if the family is already open to the Trust.
Safeguarding	To provide multiagency statutory intervention and support to meet a child's needs and reduce risks as identified in their Child in Need/Child Protection plan.
Contact & Assessment	To offer contacts to families where children are not in their care and the matter is before the Court, and to help facilitate and monitor visits to contact centres.
Children with Disabilities and Ascent	To ensure that disabled children receive appropriate care and support tailored to their individual needs, including multiagency statutory intervention and support to meet a child's needs and reduce risks as identified in their Child in Need/Child Protection plan
Child Protection & Review	To support the provision of appropriate services and interventions for children and their families
Independent Reviewing Officers	To support the provision of appropriate services and interventions for children and their families
Domestic Abuse & Interpersonal Violence	To deliver specialist case advice to Social Workers and Family Support Workers, attend Strategy Discussions, and work with/share information with partner agencies to ensure safeguarding of children.
UASC (Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children)	To ensure the children's wellbeing and safeguarding, and to assist with their legal and immigration processes.
Empower U (Contextual Safeguarding)	To help protect vulnerable children and young people from harm outside of their home environment by assessing risks and providing tailored support.

Our services may be provided face-to-face or virtually. We work in an integrated way between our children’s services teams in Birmingham Children’s Trust, and with partner organisations to ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for children, young people and families in Birmingham.

What Personal information we collect and use

To provide specialist support for a child, young person and their family we collect the following personal information: Personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, gender)

Special category characteristics (such as ethnicity, disability, mental health status, and drug and alcohol use)
Personal identifiers (including NHS numbers and Home Office numbers)
Details of family relationships, including those of extended family and friends
Reasons for support (such as what is working well and what you are worried about)
Assessment and plan information for children in need (such as further details of your issues and challenges, and how we are going to work together to bring about the changes required)
Information gathered during child protection processes (during Section 47 enquiries/investigations and Child Protection Conferences)
Episodes of being looked after (such as important dates and information on placements) and information gathered during these episodes (such as reviews)
Outcomes for looked after children, such as whether health and dental assessments are up to date, strengths and difficulties questionnaire scores and personal education plans
Adoption information, including dates of court orders and decisions and information relating to post-adoption support provided
Information on care experienced adults, including their education and employment status and the type of accommodation they are living in
Recordings of phone calls to switchboard service
Some recordings of virtual meetings with Birmingham Children’s Trust staff

We also obtain personal information from the following other sources:

Details of any young person reported missing from home, from the Police
Referral and involvement information from partner organisations
Attendance and exclusion information (such as sessions attended, number of absences, reasons, details to support statutory processes) pupil characteristics, and unique pupil number, from schools
Involvement with other Birmingham Children’s Trust teams from our existing records
Information from commissioned providers of social care services
Court decisions relating to our statutory legal duties
Details of any child or young person in care placed in Birmingham by other local authorities
Information about criminal records and current investigations, prison and probation information, risk assessments, health information, and specialist services specific to managing high risk domestic abuse

Legal reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to carry out tasks to comply with our legal obligations, to carry out tasks in the public interest and in certain circumstances, with your consent. We rely on the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

Article (6)(1)(c) - Legal obligation: the processing is necessary to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations)
Article (6)(1)(e) - Public task: the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or for official functions (task or function has a clear basis in law)
Article (6)(1)(a) - Consent: the individual has given clear consent to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

When we collect or share special category personal data, we rely upon the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

Article 9(2)(f) - Legal claims or judicial acts
Article 9(2)(g) - Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk’, and ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purposes condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(g) to process your special category data.
Article 9(2)(h) - Health or social care
Article 9(2)(j) - Archiving, research and statistics

These legal bases are underpinned by acts of legislation that dictate what actions can and should be taken by local authorities, including:

The Children and Families Act 2014
The Children and Social Work Act 2017
The Children Act 1989
The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017

The Trust relies on consent for obtaining feedback about the support the child and the family has received.

How long your personal data will be kept

We keep personal information securely in line with the Trust Retention Schedule, after which time it is made inaccessible to system users or securely destroyed, unless we are required by legal reasons to retain records for longer than the stated retention period.

Who we share your personal information with

To meet our statutory obligations under law, as well as to provide the child and family with the appropriate service. In each case The Trust will only share the minimum amount of information where it is necessary, lawful and fair with:

Teams within Birmingham Children’s Trust working to improve outcomes for children and young people
In house providers of social care services, such as internal foster carers, short breaks, etc
Probation Services and prisons where necessary
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). 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.
Schools
Partner organisations signed up to the Birmingham Collaborative Data Sharing Agreement, where necessary, which may include health visitors, midwives, district councils, housing providers, police, school nurses, doctors and mental health workers
Other Local Authorities (Children and Adults Social Care and Education Departments)
Government departments including the Department of Education, Department of Work and Pensions, and the Home Office
Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal Service
Ofsted (in the event of a local authority inspection of children’s services)
The Child Protection - Information Sharing service (CP-IS) - visit the CP-IS website for more details.
We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

No other personal information is routinely sent or held outside the UK. Should the transfer of personal information outside of the UK become necessary, it will only take place if permitted by law, and then only where there are appropriate safeguards in place to protect the information.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

Know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
Ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
Ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
Object to direct marketing
Make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
Withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

Ask us to delete information we hold about you
Have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
Object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
Object to how we are using your information
Stop us using your information in certain ways

We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note, your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under UKGDPR.

If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Disclosure Team DisclosureTeam@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk

Your right to withdraw your consent

Where we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you can withdraw your consent to our use of your data at any time. You can do this by emailing DisclosureTeam@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Contact

Please contact the Disclosure Team at DisclosureTeam@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk to exercise any of your rights.

If you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for, please contact CustomerRelations@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Subhasree De, at dpo@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk, or write to: Data Protection Officer, Birmingham Children’s Trust, 1 Avenue Road, Birmingham, B6 4DU

UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted on 03031 231113.