Children and Families Services privacy notice

We are using your personal information to look into your circumstances to see if the child has social care needs that are eligible for our support, needs to be protected or is subject to certain legal orders that we supervise.

We then work with other agencies to put in place plans to support and protect that child.

We also use your information to:

• verify your identity where required
• contact you by post
• email or telephone
• maintain our records
• manage any funding of services and your contribution to these, and to demonstrate to our own auditors and external regulators that we are providing proper services in accordance with the law

We provide these services to you as part of our statutory function as your local authority under the provisions of the:

• Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968
• Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013
• Children (Scotland) Act 1995
• Children & Young People (Scotland) Act 2014
• Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009
• Children's Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011
• Carers (Scotland) Act 2016
• Foster Children (Scotland) Act 1984
• Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007
• Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003
• Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995
• Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and related legislation applying to the care and welfare of children in Scotland

Processing personal information

Processing your personal information is necessary to comply with the law and for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council as set out in the legislation referred to above.

We may also require to process your personal data to protect the vital interests of you or another individual. If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we may not be able to provide some of these services to you.

We also need to process more sensitive personal information about you for the purposes of the provision of social care and the management of health and social care systems and services as set out in the Data Protection Act 2018.

The processing may also be necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, on the basis of Union or Member State law which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject.

It is necessary for us to process more sensitive data in order to provide such services to you and manage those services more widely.

Criminal convictions and offences data

We may also process data about any criminal convictions you may have or offences you may have committed. This is because we have responsibility for the protection of children and vulnerable adults as well as a responsibility to assess your needs.

Information about criminal offences or alleged offences will be processed by us where relevant to your support needs or the protection of vulnerable people.

We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds and will verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention. We may share this information with other public bodies (and also receive information from these other bodies) for fraud checking purposes.

We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies, such as HMRC and will do so where the law requires this. We will generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate. Your information is also analysed internally and with relevant multi-agency partners to help us improve our services.

Social care and child protection often involves multi-agency support. There are many other agencies with whom we routinely share your data in order to support and protect children. The main agencies we usually share your data with for those purposes are:

• NHS
• your GP
• any specialist whose care you are under
• hospital staff, district nurses
• Scottish Ambulance Service
• allied professions involved in your care and support

Within the Council we are likely to share information with any school the child attends, as well as local authority or private nurseries if the child is not of school age. We will share information with The Scottish Children’s Reporters Administration, the Scottish Courts and Children’s Panels in many cases.

In addition, we may share information with some other agencies depending on your individual circumstances. These may include:

• your housing provider, particularly if aspects of your support relate to housing adaptations or other housing-related issues
• the Department of Work and Pensions in terms of benefits you may receive
• Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue Service

We may share information with any provider of care and support to you or your child, including foster and kinship carers and those being paid to provide services to you.

We may share information with The Care Inspectorate if concerns are raised with them about certain services provided to you or your child.

We will also share information with other Council services where we are working with them to provide services to you.

This data sharing will only take place when necessary to discharge our legal duties based on your individual circumstances. It will be done in accordance with data protection legislation and our full privacy statement on our website

We do not anticipate any need to transfer your personal data out with the UK. We will advise you if any such need arises and explain the reasons to you or your legal representative.

We will only keep your information for the minimum period necessary.

After this time, information is deleted/destroyed in accordance with our Council approved Retention Schedule (PDF 814 KB) which explains how long we keep information for.

If you have provided anyone else’s details to us, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to Social Work Services.

We will only use this information as part of the assessment of your need for services and to contact them in connection with delivery of any such services.

If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can view the Privacy Statement.

Individual data protection rights include the following:

1. Access to your information – you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
2. Correcting your information – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up-to-date. Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.Deletion of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
   • you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
   • you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information – see 'Objecting' below to how we may use your information
   • our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations

• Objecting to how we may use your information – you have the right at any time to tell us to stop using your personal information.
• Restricting how we may use your information – in some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right applies it will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

How to contact us

Individuals can contact us:

• regarding their data protection rights and the processing of their data
• if they have a concern about the way Social Work Services is collecting or using their personal data

They should raise their concern with our Data Protection Officer in the first instance. Contact details can be found on our Privacy Statement.