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Early Help privacy notice

This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, how we use and may share information about you.  We are required to give you this information in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Who we are

Early Help, part of Children's and Adult Social Services, comprises a range of services that offer universal, additional, intensive and specialist support to children, young people and families.

The Council is the "data controller" for the personal information held by the London Borough of Southwark.  This means that we are responsible for deciding how we “process” (that is, collect, hold, use and disclose to third parties) your personal information.

The Council’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) contact is: DPO@southwark.gov.uk

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of providing advice and support for a child, young person and their family we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth gender, racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation)
  • special category characteristics (such as ethnicity and disability)
  • 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 obtain personal information from the following other sources:

  • details of any criminal offences (such as youth offending, domestic abuse, young person missing from home, crime and anti-social behaviour) from the Police
  • details of victims of youth crime from the Police (where consent has been given)
  • attendance and exclusion information (such as sessions attended, number of absences, reasons, details to support statutory processes), pupil characteristics, and unique pupil number, from your child’s school
  • involvement with other LBS children’s services teams from our existing records
  • details of adults out of work or at risk of financial exclusion or young people at risk of worklessness from Department of Work and Pensions
  • information about your additional requirements from health providers
  • housing information

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • enable integrated working with other teams and organisations to ensure you receive the right support at the right time
  • 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
  • undertake our statutory youth justice duties, to support young people within the criminal justice system and reduce youth offending (and involve victims of crime in restorative approaches as requested)
  • undertake our statutory duties around compulsory school attendance
  • undertake our statutory duties around education and training of pupils aged 16+, to support and reduce those not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET)
  • undertake our statutory duties to refer families as required to local housing authorities to reduce homelessness
  • evaluate and quality assure the services we provide
  • analyse service provision and effectiveness, and model patterns of service involvement 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 that additional support can be accessed easily, if you have consented for us to do so
  • inform you about forthcoming events/activities in Children’s and Family Centres that may be of interest to you, if you have consented for us to do so

How long we use your information for

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymize your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

Once you no longer require services from us, we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our information retention schedule.

The legal basis for processing your information

There must be a lawful basis (or justifiable reason) for us 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, and
  • Children and Social Work Act 2017
  • The Education Act, 1996
  • Crime and Disorder Act, 1998

Additionally, and where appropriate, we may seek specific consent to use your information in certain ways.  This will normally be where the use of the data is not necessary for the above purposes but may be very useful or helpful to us to provide services. For example, all marketing and feedback where personal information is obtained alongside, and directed at, individuals, and where personal information, such as photographs/videos, are used for publicity purposes.

Who we share your information with

  • teams within Southwark Council working to improve outcomes for children and young people
  • commissioned providers of local authority services (such as family support services, youth services, young carers support, NEET support, mental health services and education services)
  • schools
  • partner organisations which may include health visitors, midwives, district councils, housing providers, Police, school nurses, doctors and mental health workers
  • government Departments including the Department of Education, Department of Work and Pensions, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
  • Ofsted and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) (in the event of a local authority inspection of children’s services or youth justice services)

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

Your rights under the GDPR 

You have the following rights (but note, these rights do not apply in all circumstances):

  • your right to be informed about the processing of your personal information. This is the purpose of this notice
  • your right to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed
  • your right to object to the processing of your personal data
  • your right to restrict processing of your personal information
  • your right to have your personal data erased (“the right to be forgotten”).  As above, please note this right is subject to several restrictions, which we will discuss further with you if you choose to exercise it
  • the right to move, copy or transfer your personal information (“data portability”) in some circumstances
  • rights to be notified of, object to and challenge any automated decision made in respect of you, including profiling
  • your right to request access to your personal information and information about how the Council processes it
  • Your right to withdraw any consent you have given for the processing of personal data at any time

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.

If you want to exercise any of these rights or you are concerned about how the Council is using your data, please contact our Data Protection Officer via DPO@southwark.gov.uk or on 020 75525 5000.

More information about your rights is available on our website, or via the Information Commissioner (www.ico.org.uk).

Your responsibility to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current.

Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.  You can do to help us with this by:

  • telling us when any of your details change, and
  • telling us if any of the information we hold on you is wrong

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.

Read our corporate privacy statement.

Review date: January 2021

Page last updated: 27 June 2023

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