Privacy notice – social care (adults)

North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data. The administration of the Adult Social Care service is carried out on our behalf by our partner Agilisys.

We commission care providers to carry out the provision of domiciliary or residential care on our behalf.  This would only happen following conversations with you or your advocate, when the care provider’s contact details will be provided to you.

We also commission equipment providers to deliver specialist equipment to support your living arrangements as required. Our main supplier of this equipment is Medequip.

The information you provide will be held and used in accordance with the requirements of UK and European data protection law. The information will form part of your adult social care record, and will be held for no longer than seven years after the closure of social care involvement, with the exception of mental health assessment files, which we are obliged to keep for 20 years in accordance with the requirements of the Mental Health Acts 1983 and 2007.

Unless otherwise agreed with you, we will only collect the minimum personal data required to deliver the service, which includes demographic information, relevant medical history, details of care and support needs including contact details of your family and support network, details of how to access your home and financial information. We do not process any information relating to criminal convictions or offences.

Other local authorities and health commissioners also provide us with information about people placed in care services in North Somerset. This is in line with Care Act 2014 responsibilities to prevent abuse and consistent with national guidance.

The information will be used for the administration of your adult care service, our statutory duty under the Care Act (2014), Mental Capacity Act (2005) and the Mental Health Acts (1983 & 2007), in accordance with Article 6(1)(c) of GDPR. The processing of this information is lawful as it is necessary for the provision of adult social care service (GDPR Article 6(1)(d) and Article 9(2)(h)).

We will not use your personal information in a way that may cause you unwarranted nuisance. Failure to provide the information could result in difficulties in providing necessary care services to you.

The information provided will be shared with GPs, community health providers (such as district health nurses or therapists), the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust, acute hospital trusts who have demonstrated that they have a lawful and legitimate interest in the information, for the purposes of delivery of care and support services. We may also share your information with pharmacists, or specialist NHS service providers, such as a brain injury unit, or spinal injury unit as appropriate, for the continued provision of your care. We also have a legal obligation to share information with our local safeguarding board or the police, where we have legitimate concerns about an individual’s welfare. Where you agree to receive a carer's assessment, your information will be shared with Carers Support Alliance, for them to be able to carry out the carer's assessment. Your data is never shared or processed outside of the UK.

We may lawfully disclose information to public sector agencies to prevent or detect fraud or other crime, or to support the national fraud initiatives and protect public funds under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. Under the conditions of the Digital Economy Act 2017, we may also share personal data provided to us with other public authorities as defined in the act, for the purposes of fraud or crime detection or prevention, to recover monies owed to us, to improve public service delivery, or for statistical research. We do not share the information with other organisations for commercial purposes.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of rectification, and restriction (to destruction of records only).

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