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Families with a Future privacy notice

Being transparent and providing accessible information to individuals about how we use personal information is a key element of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679).

The information being processed

Plymouth City Council and its partners are committed to working with Children and families and also to meet the Government requirements to deliver the national Troubled Families Programme (known Locally as Families with a Future) in our area. In order to fulfil our obligations it is necessary to share information with critical partners. This is important both for the delivery of the programme and evaluating its effectiveness.

The Council is collecting the following information:

  • Names
  • Dates of Birth
  • Address details
  • Contact numbers
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity
  • Religion
  • Language
  • Disability
  • Housing information
  • Historical and current Children’s Social Care involvement
  • Anti-social behaviour and offending information, including probation
  • Records or concerns relating to domestic abuse, debt, drug and alcohol misuse, and health concerns
  • Employment and benefit information
  • Educational attendance and attainment on children
  • Details of any other agencies or services involved with you and your family.

This information will be used to enable multiagency resources to be used to deliver the best levels of support to the most appropriate individuals or families based on need, risk, vulnerability and to provide early intervention services to prevent need escalating.  

And/or

help the government and local service providers understand whether or not the programme has been effective in reducing offending, truancy, improving access to health services,  reduce the number of children entering care; getting people ready for work and to help improve the service over time.

Information Sharing 

To understand risk and vulnerability and provide early intervention and targeted support to children and families across the City we may share data with the following recipients:

Within the Council

  • Education, Participation and Skills Services
  • Children Young People and Families Services
  • Community Connections

Partner Agencies such as:

  • Commissioned Providers e.g. Children Centres

Education Providers such as:

  • Plymouth Schools

Health Services such as:

  • Livewell
  • NHS

Emergency Services such as:

  • Devon and Cornwall Police

Employment and Benefit Services such as:

  • DWP

Sharing for programme evaluation

In addition to this, the national Troubled Families Programme carries out an evaluation in which all local authorities are required to participate. Local authorities are asked to provide the following information:

A small amount of personal information (see below for list) for every individual assessed for the programme in order to conduct a National Impact Study (NIS)i.

  • Personal identifiers of individuals in all families assessed for eligibility (e.g. name, date of birth, gender and postcode)
  • Eligibility problems met (as per this Financial Framework)
  • Status of intervention (e.g. whether eligible, start/end date of intervention)
  • Available unique identifiers (e.g. National Insurance Numbers, Unique Pupil Numbers)

Family Progress Data (FPD) every six months for all individuals in families who are being supported by the programme against around a dozen measures for which there are no national administrative datasets, the data can only be used for carrying out research;

  • the linked data cannot be used to make decisions about individuals;
  • the linked information is anonymised to reduce the risk of individuals being identified;
  • it will be impossible for any person or family to be identified from any published reports;
  • the linked personal data will not be shared with or made available to the local authority or any other public agency;
  • all data is transferred, handled and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act;
  • appropriate measures are in place to prevent unauthorised use of the data;
  • the data is destroyed after eight years.

We will only ever share your information if we are satisfied that our partners or suppliers have sufficient measures in place to protect your information in the same way that we do.  

We will never share your information for marketing purposes. 

Retention Periods

We will only keep your information for 21 years

Purpose of Processing Personal information

As a local authority, the council delivers services to you. In order to do this in an effective way we will need to collect and use personal information about you.

The Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation ensure that we comply with a series of data protection principles. These principles are there to protect you and they make sure that we:

  • Process all personal information lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.
  • Collect personal information for a specified, explicit and legitimate purpose.
  • Ensure that the personal information processed is adequate, relevant and limited to the purposes for which it was collected.
  • Ensure the personal information is accurate and up to date.
  • Keep your personal information for no longer than is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was collected.
  • Keep your personal information securely using appropriate technical or organisational measures.

Your Rights

You have certain rights under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), these are:

  • The right to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
  • The right of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself.
  • The right of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
  • The right to erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
  • The right to restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
  • The right to object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.

During your contact with the council you will be informed of how you, or your children's, information will be used and shared with other services or organisations.

  1. We will usually seek your consent prior to processing or sharing your information, If you object you must inform the council, however, if there is a legal reason, as outlined under the Data Protection Act, we may not require your consent, for example:
  • To protect a child, a vulnerable adult, or member of the public
  • Where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime.
  • Tax or duty assessment
  • Required by court or law

Where we need to disclose sensitive or confidential information such as medical details to other partners, we will do so only with your prior explicit consent or where we are legally required to. We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual. 

Details of transfers to third country and safeguards 

Your personal and sensitive data will only be stored and processed on servers based within the United Kingdom. 

Data Controller

Plymouth City Council is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration number: Z7262171).

Contact details for the council's data controller are:

Data Protection Officer, Plymouth City Council, Ballard House, West Hoe Road, Plymouth Pl1 3BJ.

Email: dataprotectionofficer@plymouth.gov.uk