Privacy notice – children’s centres

North Somerset Early Help and Children Centres aim to improve access to services (both universal and targeted) for children and their parents or carers. The services provided from Early Help, Children Centres, aim to support families to understand and make effective changes that ultimately improve their family’s health and wellbeing. 

Find more information about Early Help, see our Children Centres pages on our website. 

If you and your family might benefit from the support available, the Early Help, Children Centres will gather relevant information from you to help ensure you receive the right support at the right time.   

We will usually collect some personal details from your family. This would include full names of everyone in your household, dates of birth, gender, full address and contact details (telephone and email), your ethnicity, any disabilities or additional health needs, contact details of your GP, and any other service supporting your family, relationship status and languages spoken. It is important to have details of both parents/carers, whether you live together or not, as research shows both parents make a difference to children, and we may from time to time offer services for separated families as well as new partners living in the household. We may also ask you to describe your family’s needs and the support that may assist.  

The information will be used for the administration of Early Help, Children’s Centres offer; it is our statutory duty under the Sure Start Children’s Centre Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities, commissioners of Local Health Services and Job Centre Plus (April 2013) to collect information to demonstrate to the Local Authority and Department of Education how we are making a difference to the outcomes for children under 5 in our community.  This is in accordance with Articles 6(1)(e) and 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR. 

We may also anonymise some personal data you provide to us to ensure that you cannot be identified and use this data to allow the council to target and plan the provision of services effectively.  For example, we may use statistics/numbers relating to ethnicity of families to measure reach of services to ensure we are reaching the whole community. 

In some cases, the council may use your information for another purpose if it has a legal duty to do, such as safeguarding or to provide statistical data to other local authority departments.  In these circumstances, you will be notified of this change in processing. 

We may also share personal information with the council’s safeguarding team and our multi-agency safeguarding partners, which includes Avon and Somerset Police, if we consider there to be there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life. 

We collect your information when you request support from Early Help, Children Centre, via paper forms. 

We may also gather information about your family through telephone contact with you or face to face in a meeting with you. If another service is contacting the Early Help Team, Children Centre on your behalf, then they may share your details with us by secure email. 

If you already receive support from a service and it is felt you would benefit from receiving support from further services, your information could be shared with several services to get coordinated support for you and your family.  You will be notified if your information is being shared in this manner, and it will be your decision whether you wish to accept the additional services being offered. 

If you have completed a membership form and have agreed to be contacted, then your children centre may email you with information on the services that are available. 

Your information will be held on our secure database system and will be shared with the services that support you. These include: 

• North Somerset Children’s Services including Early Help 
• Children’s centres 
• Social work teams 
• Public Health teams such as Health Visitors 
• Department for Work and Pension employment advisors 
• Education partnerships 

Any details recorded on our database will only be accessed by those working as part of Early Help, Children Centres for the purposes of supporting your family and monitoring the effectiveness of services provided. 

We only share sensitive personal data in limited circumstances - where we are required to do so by law or where it is necessary to fulfil our statutory obligations. This includes providing a range of public sector services for your health and social care, and the safeguarding of vulnerable children and adults. The sharing of personal data will include the linking of data sets held by the council, the NHS and other public sector partners, including Avon and Somerset Police, to comply with our statutory duties. 

We will only keep your information for as long as is required by law and to provide you with the necessary services in line with our retention schedule. 

In general information related to Early Help or the Children Centre providing a service to the family, recorded data (family’s personal details and contact information) will be retained for up to six years from point of the last contact with the family concerned. 

You have the right to request access to the information that we hold about you. 

The UK General Data Protection Regulation also gives you additional rights that refer to how the council holds and uses your information. 

Consequently, under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:  

• object to and restrict further processing of your data; however, this may affect service delivery to you. 
• request to have your data deleted where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing and provided that there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it. 
• request your data to be rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete. 
• have your data transferred or copied should you move to another local authority area. 

Information about how you can submit a subject access request can be found on our subject access request pages.

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we process your personal data, our Data Protection Officer can be contacted at DPO@n-somerset.gov.uk 

You have a right to complain to us if you think we have not complied with our obligation for handling your personal information. 

If you are not satisfied with the council’s response you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO helpline can be contacted via a webchat feature on the ICO website or by telephone on 0303 123 1113. 

You can also contact the ICO in writing at: 

Information Commissioner's Office 

Wycliffe House 

Water Lane 

Wilmslow 

Cheshire 

SK9 5AF