Health and social care privacy notices

Early Help is part of Children's and Adult Social Services. We offer universal, additional, intensive and specialist services to children, young people and their families.

We are the data controller.

We decide how to process your personal information. We determine data collection, storage, usage, and disclosure to third parties.

Personal information we collect and use

We collect data to support children, young people and their families. This includes:

• personal information like name, address, contact details, date of birth and gender
• special category characteristics like ethnicity, disability, religious or philosophical beliefs and sexual orientation
• reasons for support, such as what is working well and what you are worried about
• assessment and plan information, such as further details of your issues and challenges, and how we are going to work together to bring about the changes you want to see
• details of events and services that you access through us

We also get personal information from:

• the police for data on youth offending, domestic abuse, young persons missing from home, crime and anti-social behaviour
• the police about victims of youth crime (where consent has been given)
• schools for attendance and exclusion information, pupil characteristics, and unique pupil numbers
• Department for Work and Pensions for details of adults out of work or at risk of financial exclusion, or young people at risk of worklessness
• health providers for information about your additional requirements
• housing organisations for housing information

We use your personal information to:

• work with other teams and organisations to get timely support
• plan and provide the most appropriate level of support for you and your family
• support you to access relevant support and advice services and groups
• fulfil our statutory youth justice duties by supporting young people in the criminal justice system and to reduce youth offending
• undertake our statutory duties around compulsory school attendance
• educate and train pupils aged 16+ and reduce the number not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET)
• refer families to local housing authorities to reduce homelessness
• evaluate and quality-assure the services we provide
• analyse service effectiveness to support future service delivery planning
• inform future service provision and the commissioning of services
• register your family at your local Children’s and Family Centre so support can be easily accessed
• inform you about forthcoming events or activities in Children’s and Family Centres that may be of interest to you

How long we use your information for

We will keep your personal information only as long as necessary, and only for the reason we collected it. This is to meet legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

In some cases, we may anonymise your personal info. It then can't be linked to you. We may use it without giving you further notice.

We will securely destroy your personal information after you no longer need our services.

The legal basis for processing your information

We must have a lawful basis to collect, store, use, and disclose your personal information.

We have legal grounds to process this information because it is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.

These tasks we carry out are under the:

• Children Act 1989
• Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000
• Adoption & Children Act 2002 and associated regulations
• Childcare Act 2006
• Children and Families Act 2014
• Children and Social Work Act 2017
• The Education Act 1996
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998

We may seek specific consent to use your information in particular ways. This will normally be because using the data will be helpful to us in providing services.

We share information with:

• teams within the council working to improve the outcomes for children and young people
• commissioned providers of local authority services, including family support services, youth services, young carers support, NEET support, mental health services and education services
• schools
• partner organisations, including health visitors, midwives, district councils, housing providers, Police, school nurses, doctors and mental health workers
• government departments, including the Department of Education, Department for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Justice, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
• Ofsted
• His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP)

We share personal info with law enforcement if required by law.

Your rights under GDPR 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out how we must handle personal data. It gives you more control over what happens to your data.

It means you usually have the right to:

• be told how your personal data is being used, known as the purpose of this notice
• have your personal information corrected if it is wrong or incomplete
• object to the processing of your personal data
• restrict how we process your personal information
• have your personal data erased, known as the right to be forgotten
• move, copy or transfer your personal information, known as data portability
• be told, object to and challenge any automated decision about you, including profiling
• request your personal information and we process it
• withdraw your consent

For legal reasons, there may be times when we are unable to comply with your request.

Contact us

You can:

• write to Information Governance Team PO Box 64529 London SE1P 5LX
• email dpo@southwark.gov.uk
• call 020 7525 5000