Children’s Social Care

This privacy notice explains what personal information is collected, what it is used for and who it is provided to. The notice also describes why the Council requires your data, and the legal basis on which it does this.
This privacy notice relates to the Council’s Children’s Social Care service. It provides additional information that specifically relates to this particular service, and should be read together with our general privacy notice, which provides more detail on the questions below. Read our general privacy notice.

We've made some of our privacy notices easier to understand. We hope they help children and some adults to learn more about what we do with their data.

If you have received or receive care and support from us, or where a social care referral has been made about you or your family, this service uses personal information, such as:

• name, data of birth and address, country of birth, certain characteristics about you such as gender, languages spoken.
• Information about family members, carers, and information about any support services or professionals that have worked with you/ are working with you.
• Information about being looked after or a Child in Need, such as key dates, referrals, assessments, child protection information, placements, court orders.
• Information about care leavers, their activity and what type of accommodation they have

This service also uses the following special category personal information:

• Ethnicity
• Your religion (if any)
• Sexual orientation (where this is relevant in the circumstances)
• Information relating to your physical or mental health, including any disabilities or additional needs.

We may also hold relevant criminal history about you, including allegations made against you.

The Council uses your personal data for the following reasons: to assess you or a family member’s needs and identify appropriate services and support;

Plan and provide our social care services to you or a family member;

Meet our legal obligations to children and young people in the Manchester area, including early years, early help/troubled families, disability support, support for educational needs, advice and support services, allocation of a professional social worker or family support worker, providing support services for children and families who meet the threshold for “Child in Need;”

Safeguarding and Child Protection, such as investigating referrals, carrying out risk assessments, working with you and/or other professionals to discuss concerns, and if necessary making a legal application to the court;

Identifying and managing residential placements and foster placements for our Looked After Children;

Providing fostering and adoption services;

Supporting young people who are leaving Local Authority Care;

Monitoring the quality of the services we provide to you or a family member and check how our services are performing overall, for example by carrying out quality checks or requesting your feedback;

To assess whether you are suitable to foster or adopt in line with national guidelines and to maintain a directory of foster carers and prospective adopters;

To carry out and record assessments and reports which we are legally required by the court to carry out, for example a Child and Family Assessment;

To carry out financial assessments or allowances, such as foster carers or special guardianship financial support;

To comply with any other legal duties required from us by an outside organization, such as the Department of Education or Ofsted;

To log and respond to any queries or complaints you make about out service;

To promote the services and support we provide, including administering awards celebrating the achievements of looked after children and young carer;

In order to improve our service delivery, we may use personal information to create statistics which help us see how our services are being used and how they should be funded. Wherever possible, personal information is anonymized.

We also use personal information for equalities monitoring purposes, so that we can be sure that we’re reaching out and responding to all sectors of the community.

If you are receiving support from us, the NHS may share your NHS number with us for social care purposes. We use your NHS number to identify you more easily when we work with the NHS, for example your GP or hospital. The NHS operates a national opt out scheme, and if you don’t want the NHS to share your NHS number with us or with other organisations, please let your social worker know.

We will only collect and use this information where it is necessary and:

We are under a legal obligation to do so (Article 6(1) (c ) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation ( UK GDPR) or

Where it is necessary in order to perform our public tasks and duties as a Local Authority (Article 6 (1)(e) UK GDPR).

In some cases, we may be required to use your information where it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency (Article 6(1)(d) UK GDPR

The additional legal basis relied upon for using special category data is:

Where is it necessary to deliver social care services (Article 9(2)(h) UK GDPR and Schedule 1 Part 1 Data Protection Act 2018;

Where it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency (Article 9(2)(c )UK GDPR

Where it is necessary for legal cases (Article 9(2)(f) UK GDPR;

Where it is necessary because there is a substantial public interest reason (for example, safeguarding of children and individuals at risk, prevention or detection of unlawful acts, for equality of opportunity and treatment). (Article 9(2)(g) UK GDPR and Schedule 1 Part 2 Data Protection Act 2018.

The additional legal basis relied upon to use criminal offence data, including allegations, is consent or where this is necessary to protect individuals and safeguarding or for other reasons of substantial public interest (Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018).

Some of the personal information we may hold will come directly from you when you contact us or use our services. 
Whilst the majority of children looked after information you provide to us is mandatory, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. In order to comply with the data protection legislation, we will tell you whether you are required to provide certain information to us or if you have a choice in this.
In order to provide our services, or to comply with legal obligations, we may request and receive information from other organisations and services, for example:

• Other departments within the Council;
• Other Local Authorities where you or your family have lived;
• Information from your GP or NHS about your medical history;
• Information from a school or education provider;
• Information from the police, rehabilitation services or youth offending services;
• Other safeguarding professionals such as psychologists;

Your personal data is shared securely with the following organisations where it is both necessary and appropriate to do so.

We share your personal data with the following organisations:

• Organisations who are delivering a service on our behalf;
• Health Agencies;
• Safeguarding agencies and partnerships;
• Schools and other education providers;

Government Departments and Agencies, for example the Department of Education and Ofsted, where the data held by local authorities are required to help develop national policies, manage local authority performance, administer and allocate funding and identify and encourage good practice;

• Fostering and Adoption Agencies;
• Third Sector/ Voluntary Agencies;
• Other specialist Agencies such as Substance Misuse;
• The courts and legal professionals, for example, as part of care proceedings or adoption;

We may share your information to protect you or other another person in an emergency (for example, with the police, NHS or with Immigration/ Border Control.

Our retention schedule sets out how long we keep personal information for.

You can read about what rights you have regarding the personal information used for this service on our website: manchester.gov.uk

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about how the Council uses your personal information, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

Complaints or queries

If you have any concerns about the way the we use your personal information, we would ask you to come to us first for help. You do however have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

• 0303 123 1113 (local rate)
• casework@ico.org.uk
• Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.