Privacy notice for child community health and wellbeing

Devon County Council is a public authority that from 1 April 2019 will have responsibility for the delivery of community healthcare services to children and families within the county of Devon. A breakdown of the services delivered by DCC include:

  • Portage
  • Public Health Nursing
  • Rehabilitation Officers for Visually Impaired Children (ROVIC) Service
  • Children’s Homes for Children with additional needs service

DCC is a Data Controller under Data Protection Legislation and our ICO registration number is Z6475582.

This notice explains what information we collect, why we collect it and how we keep it secure. It also explains your rights and our legal obligation. For more details about how we keep your personal data secure contact our Data Protection Officer.

We will notify you of any changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was last updated on 1 April 2019. If we use your personal data for any new purposes, updates will be made to the policy information and changes communicated, where necessary in accordance with current data protection legislation. Any queries relating to this privacy note please contact the Data Protection Officer.

How will we use your personal data?

We are working with partners such as Babcock Learning and Development Partnership, the Devon Children and Families Alliance and other primary care organisations such as GPs and hospital trusts nationwide to deliver health and care services. As part of a multi-agency approach, we may share personal data about patients to improve care for children, young people, patients and the public.

Whenever you use a health or care service offered by DCC, important information about you or your child/children is collected to help ensure you/they get the best possible care and treatment.

The information we collect about your may need to be shared with other professionals, so that we can deliver the right services to you. We will only share the minimum amount of personal data to deliver your care, and any sharing which takes place, will comply with data protection legislation. The organisations we may share your personal data with are outlined below:

  • The Devon Children and Families Alliance
  • Babcock Learning and Development Partnership
  • Children’s Social Services (for children based in Devon this will be Devon Children’s Services)
  • General Practitioners
  • Primary Healthcare Providers.

The information collected about you when you use these services can also be provided to other approved organisations, where there is a legal basis, to help with planning services, improving care provided, research into developing new treatments and preventing illness. This helps to provide better care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential personal information about your health and care is only used in this way where allowed by law and would never be used for insurance or marketing purposes without your explicit consent.

You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. To find out more about the wider use of confidential information and to register your choice to opt out if you do not want your data to be used in this way, visit nhs.uk/my-data-choice. If you do choose to opt out you can still consent to your data being used for specific purposes.

If you are not happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. You can change your choice at any time.

What information do we collect?

We may hold records about you which may include:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • Telephone number(s)
  • Email address(s)
  • Next of kin
  • Emergency contact information
  • Your ethnicity
  • Details of any disability you may have
  • Your religion
  • Your registered GP
  • Clinical information necessary to deliver services to you, including your NHS Number
  • Social care information that might be necessary to deliver services to you.

Why are we collecting your personal data?

DCC aims to provide you with the highest quality of health care. To do this we must keep records about you, your health and the care we have provided, or plan to provide to you. Health records are held on paper and electronically, and we have a legal duty to keep these confidential, accurate and secure.  This information will be stored in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation.

Your information is never collected for direct marketing purposes and is not sold on to any other third parties. Information will be retained in line with the council’s Corporate Retention Schedule and will be stored in accordance with your rights under data protection legislation.

Who will we share your information with?

Your child’s name, address and the unique identification numbers that are assigned to your child in our education, health and social care systems will be imported into a data matching tool that is used by the Children and Education Service to improve the efficiency of data matching. This will help us to deliver integrated care and educational services to you and your child, and will enable Devon County Council to continue to better discharge our safeguarding responsibilities to children at risk.

We may also share personal data relating to you and your child with health care professionals for the purposes of supporting your health needs. We will only share information that is relevant and necessary for this purpose.

It may also be necessary for us to share your personal data with social care professionals, if we consider this will be necessary to safeguard you or your child from harm.

The legal basis for us collecting your personal data

Where we are collecting personal data about you for the provision of care, we rely upon your consent (article 6(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation). You may withdraw your consent at any time. To do this, please contact the service representative you have been dealing with.

If we feel that it is necessary to share your personal data with professionals to ensure you or your child/children are safeguarded from harm, we rely upon the provisions of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and Children Act 1989 and 2004. Where it is necessary to share medical information for these purposes, we rely upon article 9(2)(h) of the General Data Protection Regulation (information necessary for medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems).

We are required to notify officials of infectious diseases which present significant risk to human health and the wider public. Our legal basis for sharing this information is outlined in the Public Health Control of Disease Act 1984 and the Health Protection Notification Regulations 2010.

We may also need to share some personal data about you, so that we can support third party organisations to discharge their regulatory requirements. This includes organisations such as:

  • The data protection regulator (the Information Commissioner’s Office)
  • The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted)
  • The Care Quality Commission

We may also share information to enable us to comply with court orders and other legal obligations.

Your data protection rights

Under Data Protection Legislation, you have the right to obtain a copy of their personal records held by us; this is called a Subject Access Request (SAR). For details of how to make a request, please visit our access to information website.

Find out more on your rights under data protection legislation and how to exercise them.

International transfers

DCC does not transport or share personal data outside of the European Union.

Your right to complain

If you have any comments, queries or complaints about this privacy notice or the processing of your personal data please contact our Data Protection Officer.

If you remain dissatisfied with the way your personal data has been handled, you may refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office whose contact details are below:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Email:casework@ico.org.uk

Changes to how we may process your personal data during the COVID-19 crisis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we may need to process personal data about you and your family that is supplied to us by NHS Digital.  This is necessary to enable the Public Health Nursing service to effectively discharge its safeguarding responsibilities during this crisis.

For more information about the information that will be processed for this purpose, please visit the NHS Digital website.

It may also be necessary for Devon County Council to change the way that we process your personal data, to ensure we can protect public health and deliver essential services to you and the public during this crisis. For more information read our COVID-19 privacy notice.