Fair processing notices - Early help

Early help services comprise a range of services that offer universal, targeted, specialist and intensive support to children, young people and families.

Support is offered and provided by family support teams, young carers workers, youth workers and substance misuse workers from our open-access children’s centres and youth buildings.

Early help services are also offered via schools, health services and other voluntary and public sector organisations.  

We work in an integrated way with other children’s services teams in Stoke-on-Trent City Council and with partner organisations to ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for children, young people and families in Stoke-on-Trent.

In the course of providing advice and support for a child, young person and their family we collect:

• personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth gender)
• 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:

• 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 Stoke-on-Trent City Council 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 visitors
• housing information from Stoke-on-Trent City Council

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 to 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
• evaluate and quality assure the services we provide
• inform future service provision and the commissioning of services
• register your family on our management information system to enable the coordination of support when you need it 
• inform you about forthcoming events and activities in children’s centres or taking place across the city that may be of interest to you, if you have consented for us to do so

We will hold your personal information securely and retain it from the child or young person’s date of birth until they reach the age of 25, after which the information is archived or securely destroyed.

We collect and use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations, and to carry out tasks in the public interest.

If we need to collect special category (sensitive) personal information, we rely upon reasons of substantial public interest (safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk, and equality of opportunity or treatment), and for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.

These legal bases are underpinned by legislation that dictates what actions can and should be taken by local authorities, including:

• The Education Act 1996
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998
• Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE)
• The Localism Act 2011
• Children's Act 1989
• Children's Act 2004
• Section 35 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, read with the Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018
• We are also guided by the Government's Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance

We share your personal information with

• teams within Stoke-on-Trent City Council working to improve outcomes for children and young people
• commissioned providers of local authority services (such as health services, mental health services, education services, services commissioned under the Troubled Families Programme, Department for Work and Pensions)
• schools
• partner organisations who are signatories of the Staffordshire One Information Sharing Protocol, where necessary, which may include health visitors, midwives, Staffordshire County Council, 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)
• relevant Government departments for the purposes of evaluating the effectiveness of the programmes we run. The data we share for these purposes will not be anonymised in cases where it is necessary for further linking of the data to take place

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

We may share data with our internal audit team to evaluate the effectiveness of the organisation’s risk management, control and governance processes.  We may also share your data with the council's fraud team to help to prevent and detect fraud.

Under GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

• know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
• ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
• ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
• object to direct marketing
• make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office
• withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

• ask us to delete information we hold about you
• have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
• object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
• object to how we are using your information
• stop us using your information in certain ways

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.

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.

If you wish to contact us in relation to any of your information rights, email foi@stoke.gov.uk or write to Information Rights Team, Floor 2, Civic Centre, Glebe Street, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 1HH.

Complete the online form

If you wish to complain about how your personal information has been handled by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, contact the information rights team in the first instance using the details above. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, or call 03031231113

Information Commissioner's Office website