Information relating to the Privacy Notice for our Family Support Service.
Nature of work
Early Help is a way of supporting people to avoid problems, or to deal with them before they get worse. Problems may emerge at any point during childhood and adolescence.
Early Help ensures long-term sustainability and community empowerment. Its aim is to help families at the earliest point, improving children and young people’s life chances and reducing demand for crisis services.
The Family Support Service, which is part of Solihull Council’s Early Help offer, work with children, young people and families to provide support to them before the need for crisis services. It brings together:
- individuals
- people providers
- groups and organisations
- direct work
- community provision
- community capacity building
This is a non-statutory function within Solihull Council and we will seek consent to work with families.
Why we need your information
We will use your personal information for a limited number of purposes and always in line with our responsibilities, where there is a legal basis, and your rights under data protection legislation.
We will process personal information:
- for the purpose for which you provided the information, e.g. the processing of a request for support from the Family Support Service
- to work with other agencies who are/may also be working to support children, young people and families
- to enable us to communicate with you and provide the services you need or are entitled to
- to monitor our performance in providing services to you; to gather statistical information to allow us to plan future provision of services and to obtain your opinion about our services
- to meet legal requirements
- to enable us to perform statutory functions for data gathering and data returns as outlined by UK government
- for the prevention and/or detection of crime including fraud
- for general processing where you have given your consent for us to do so
- where it is necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury
- where it is permitted under data protection legislation, e.g. to comply with legal obligations
We aim to always keep your information accurate and up to date. You can help us to do this at any time by letting us know if any of the information you have given us, such as your address, changes.
The Department for Education (DfE) have requested pseudonymised data about children who are supported at Targeted Early Help level using a secure data portal called achieve forms, which is password protected.
The DfE will perform data validations and analysis and provide reports back to Solihull Council and will contribute to national analysis. These reports will only contain cohort level data which is non-identifiable.
What is the purpose of this collection?
The DfE are introducing reforms which changes the way support for families is delivered through the Families First Partnership Programme. They are collecting this data to be able to understand:
- the problems children and families are experiencing
- which professionals are leading the support
- the outcome of the support
For further information on how DfE processes your personal data, please visit personal information charter - DfE.
Type/classes of information processed
We process a variety of information relating to individuals including:
- personal details
- family details
- lifestyle and social circumstances
- financial details
- employment and education details
- housing needs
We also process what is referred to as special categories of information that may include data revealing:
- racial or ethnic origin
- religion
Who information is processed about
The classes of personal information we process include:
- children and young people under the age of 19 (or 25 if they have a special educational need)
- family members
Who information may be shared with
Where necessary or required, we share information with:
- family members, associates or representatives of the person whose personal data we are processing
- healthcare professionals, social and welfare advisers or practitioners
- educational establishments
- charitable organisations
- other council departments
- law enforcement agencies
How long we will keep your information
We will not keep your information any longer than needed. The length of time will vary from service to service and will be guided by either legislation or the Council's internal retention records guidance, which states how long records should be retained.
Transfers overseas
Information is not transferred overseas.