This Privacy Notice has been designed to inform Children, Young People and Families of Cardiff Council’s Children Services about how their personal data will be processed by Cardiff Council.
Cardiff Council has to collect personal information from individuals to enable us to provide tailor made social care services. Some of this information may be sensitive and could include data on health, disability or racial and ethnic background. We may also need to collect information on your carers, friends and relatives.
Individuals who are receiving social care would have already been told that this information was collected. This notice explains more about how we process this information, what it is used for and how we keep this information secure.
What types of personal data do we process?
The types of personal data we process include, but are not limited to:
General categories:
- Immediate personal information e.g., full name, date of birth, gender etc
- Contact details, e.g., address etc
- Demographic data, e.g., Ethnicity, First Language etc
- Social Care and Health records where relevant to any safeguarding and wellbeing concerns raised on children.
Subcategories:
- Parents / Carers details (including any relatives and / or persons with legal responsibility for children and young people)
- Records considered to be relevant to any safeguarding and wellbeing concerns raised on children.
- The child’s needs and circumstances
- Professional opinions
- Staff supporting the child.
- When and where staff met with the child
- What the meetings were about and what happened in them
- Information that the child’s carer / other people they know have given to us
- Information provided by other services working with the child, e.g., Health, Education,
- Care workers and voluntary agencies
- Vulnerable Characteristics, e.g., Children Looked After (CLA), Free School Meals (FSM), Asylum Seekers, Travellers, English/Welsh as an Additional Language (EAL), Service Children, Young Carers, etc.
How do we obtain your personal data?
We obtain your personal data from sources including:
- Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
- Assessment and Care Planning
- Childrens Services’ Central Services
- Service Improvement and Strategy
- Substitute Family care
- Well-being, Protection and Support
- Locality Childrens Services
- The Education and Lifelong Learning Directorate
- Looked After Children Education
- Youth Justice Service
- Youth Service
- Benefits Service
- Birth Registrations
- Early Years (including Flying Start)
- Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS)
- Clearsprings Ready Homes Ltd (in relation to Asylum Seekers)
- Connect 2 Cardiff (C2C)
- Council Tax
- Education Welfare Service (EWS)
- Other Local Authorities, Schools and / or educational settings that form part of your child’s educational history
- Passenger Transport Service
How do we use your personal data?
Personal information is used to evaluate whether people are eligible for social care services and which services they should receive. We also use information to help us plan, organise and improve those services, report on the work we have done and show we have used public funds properly. Where possible information used for these purposes is made anonymous.
We make sure all personal information is held securely and only made available to those who need to use it. We do not keep personal information longer than we need to.
Children’s Services use the information to ensure the safeguarding and well-being of the children within Cardiff Council. We will use this information to make sure that:
- staff supporting the child have accurate, up to date information to help decide the best possible support for them
- there are accurate records when we review their care and support
- any concerns can be properly looked into if you have a complaint
- they only have to give their information once
We may use your personal information for one or more of the following purposes:
- Childcare offer
- Children Receiving Care and Support for Parents and Carers
- LDR Looked After Children
- Assessment and Care Planning
- Central Services
- Service Improvement and Strategy
- Substitute Family care
- Well-being, Protection and Support
- Locality Childrens Services
- Youth Offending Services
- CHAD
- Safeguarding and Reviewing Hub
- Business Performance and Policy
- Early Help
- Youth Service
- Adoption
- Fostering
- Young Carers
- Child Disability
- Children’s play services project
What is our lawful basis for processing your personal data?
Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are
Article 6 (1) :
(c) We have a legal obligation.
(d) We have a vital interest.
(e) We need it to perform a public task.
(f) We have a legitimate interest.
Our additional legal bases for using your special category information are substantial public interest/the delivery of health and social care services.
The organisations we may share your personal data with
We may share your personal data with other departments within Cardiff Council and external organisations we work with. Within Cardiff Council, these may include:
- Those that provide care services on behalf of the Cardiff Council.
- Those that inspect and monitor our work.
- Organisations such as the NHS who work with us to provide services.
- Corporate Resources to effectively resource our services
- People and Communities to support Community Safety and Cohesion
The agencies / organisations we share your data with externally include:
- Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (CAVCUHB)
- Police / Courts (under lawful basis – See Sharing personal data with law enforcement authorities | ICO)
- Relevant Local Authorities forming part of your child’s history (See individual Local Authorities / Councils within England and Wales for their Privacy Notices)
- Welsh Government (Data collection and information management) to help improve care and support in Wales
- Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA)
We will make you aware before sharing your information, usually at the time we collect it.
- We will only share this information with an organisation if they need it to do their job.
- We will not pass on more information than we need to.
- We will share your information without your permission, only if the law says we should. This could be to protect your vital interests, to prevent someone else being put at risk or to detect or prevent fraud.
Each year the Welsh Government (WG) collects information about children for the Looked After Children returns and the Wales Children Receiving Care and Support Census (CASP) Census, from Local Authorities across Wales. The WG has access to the data of children in need receiving services from local authorities. You, as either the parent or carer of such a child, or as such a child yourself over the age of 12, have the right to be informed about the processing and uses of this data by WG.
The information sent varies each year, but will include personal characteristics and details of social care services provided. If a child has a Unique Pupil Number (UPN) that will be included in the CASP Census. This UPN lets the Welsh Government match each child’s care and education information. The Welsh Government does not use the child’s name in this exercise, nor take any action in relation to individual children nor identify them in reports.
You can ask the Welsh Government for a list of data items in the Wales CASP Census.
Your data protection rights
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
- Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
- Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
- Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
- Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
- Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
- Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
Please contact us at IndividualRights@Cardiff.gov.uk if you wish to make a request or
complete the form.
How to complain
If you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that the service area has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the
Information Commissioner's Office: 0303 123 1113.
Contacting Data Protection
Please contact the Data Protection Officer for further information.
Data Protection Officer
Information Governance Team
County Hall
Atlantic Wharf
Cardiff
CF10 4UW
This privacy notice was last updated on 30 May 2023.