Overarching Privacy Notice
This notice is overarching and provides general information about how the Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership processes data.
We are committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services.
This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, and how we may use and share information about you. We are required to give you this information under data protection law.
About us:
We support and enable local organisations and agencies to work together in a system where:
- children are safeguarded and their welfare promoted
- partner organisations and agencies collaborate, share, and co-own the vision for how to achieve improved outcomes for vulnerable children
- organisations and agencies challenge appropriately and hold one another to account effectively
- there is early identification and analysis of new safeguarding issues and emerging threats
- learning is promoted and embedded in a way that local services can become more reflective and implement changes to practice
- information is shared effectively to facilitate more accurate and timely decision making for children and families.
How we use your information:
We carry out work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in Somerset. This work includes:
- conduction of Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews when a child dies or is seriously harmed and abuse and/or neglect is suspected
- providing multi-agency training and development to staff on safeguarding children
- evaluate and quality assurance the efficacy of multi-agency safeguarding provisions
- communicating to professionals and the public.
To deliver this work, we sometimes need to collect personal information. The sections below explain how we use your information in each of the areas.
Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews and other quality assurance:
Part 3 of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018 and Working Together 2023 statutory guidance requires local safeguarding partners to undertake reviews of cases in specific circumstances where there is potential for identifying improvements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. These specific circumstances include where a child has died or been seriously harmed, and abuse or neglect is known or suspected.
For these reasons we collect the following information:
Child/Children:
- name of child/children
- date/s of birth
- date/s of death (if applicable)
- date/s of critical incident
- home address/es
- ethnic origin/s
- are they subject to a Child Protection Plan and/or in receipt of other services?
- whereabouts at time of critical incident
- carer/s at time of critical incident
Family:
- name/s
- relationship to the child/ren
- date of birth/s
- address/es
- legal status and/or current criminal proceedings
- ethnic origin/s
- is/was subject of a Child Protection Plan and/or in receipt of other services
We will also request chronologies of the child’s life from partner agencies, if necessary.
We will share this information with:
- all our partner agencies (i.e. police, local authority children’s services, health etc.) to check for their involvement with the family
- other identified local safeguarding children partnerships and their partners to check for involvement
- the Rapid Review Group to consider the case for review
- lead reviewers for the case when appointed to undertake the review
- review team for the case
- practitioners who have/had involvement with the family and have agreed to contribute to the review (confidently is stressed).
It is statutory requirement to publish the findings from the Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews and all reports are fully anonymised to protect the identity of the children and families involved.
Other quality assurance processes we undertake may involve the collection of additional personal information, special category data, data on linked individuals (familial and extra-familial) from a range of multi-agency partners. This data is collected and analysed to ensure the safeguarding and welfare arrangements for children and young people are effective, to evaluate integrated working, and quality assure services provided in Somerset, identifying gaps and supporting policy.
Learning and development:
For the purpose of learning and development opportunities we ask you for the following information when you book a course:
- name
- job role, organisation, and sector
- contact details (i.e. email address, telephone number, and address)
- budget codes and/or purchase order number (if applicable)
- dietary or other requirements (face-to-face courses only)
The following information is held for 4 years after the course dates for the purpose of anonymous learning and development reports and as a record of when people attend training:
- name
- job role, organisation, and sector
- email address
Communications:
If you sign up to receive communications from us (newsletters, updates, campaigns, and event details) we will collect and store your name, organisation, and email address. This information will not be shared outside of the organisation. Your details will be stored until you request to no long receive communications, in which case they will be deleted from the system.
Surveys:
From time-to-time we conduct surveys to gather feedback. Information from our survey responses will not be shared outside of the Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership and will only be used for the purpose which the survey was developed. Information will be stored securely.
Disclosing your information:
We may pass on your personal information if we have a legal obligation to do so, or if we have any other arrangements. This includes exchanging information with other public sector organisations.
Data storage:
Your data will not be transferred abroad unless this is stated in the service specific privacy notice. Your data will be retained in line with the SSCP retention schedule.
Report concerns:
If you have a concern about the way your information is being used, we ask that you raise your concerns with us in the first instance by emailing using our fill in our online form
If you would like to make a formal complaint or compliment, please fill in our online form
Alternatively, you have a right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO is the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights.
Contact details for the ICO are as follows:
Telephone: 03000 123 1113
Address: Information Commissioner’s Officer (Head Office), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.