Privacy notices

We are committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services. This privacy notice explains how we use personal information about you and your family and how we protect your privacy in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018. This notice applies to any activity involving our use of your personal data, for example, collecting, storing, sharing, and destroying it.

Croydon Family Hub services are for families from pregnancy through to young people turning 19 years of age (or 25 if they have a disability). Family Hubs bring together a number of different services and organisations that are all working together to support you and your family.

Family Hub services are provided by Croydon Council, Croydon Health Service NHS Trust and a partnership of organisations who work together to provide better help and services to families in the London Borough of Croydon. The partnership includes a large number of services for example, health agencies, schools, youth services, healthy homes, immunisation teams and housing providers.

The information collected on the Family Hub registration form is for the purpose of providing you access to Family Hub services.

What information we collect

We collect a range of information including some or all of the following:

• Your personal information and that of your family (including name, date of birth, ethnicity, address, telephone number, email address, disability).
• Information about your family circumstances that help us work with you to provide the support you need.

Why we collect your information

With consent, we use your data to:

• to determine the services and support that you may require
• to provide the most appropriate support to you or your family
• to discover the type of services that you are receiving and plan future services
• to monitor and check the level of services that we are providing for everyone overall
• produce statistics and reports to research and plan new services 
• statistics are used in such a way that individual children or young people cannot be identified from them
• assess performance and set targets for service improvement
• monitor and evaluate service provision, and review the quality of the provision
• comply with government department research and statistical returns
• inform targeted support and services to families, children and young people who are most in need and at risk of harm
• provide a co-ordinated approach to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children
• account for our decisions and investigate complaints
• enable us to carry out our statutory functions and duties including safeguarding
• identify children and young people that are being harmed or abused, or at risk of harm or abuse identify and comply with safeguarding policies and procedures
• assess any additional needs a child or young person may have
   

Who we share information with

Everyone working for Croydon Family Hubs services has a legal duty to keep and process information about you in accordance with the law.

The information you give us will be kept on a secure case management system to make sure you and your family receive the best service from our Family Hubs, and it also helps us report on what we do and develop the services. To make sure you and your family get the best service, we may need to share information with other professional organisations. We will treat your information as confidential and we will not share it with any other organisation without your consent, unless it is for a safeguarding reason for example and issue or incident. If such sharing does have to take place, we will normally inform you that it is taking place and the reasons why. In some very limited circumstances, this may not be able to happen if it is believed informing you may place someone at risk of harm. We will only ever share the minimum information we need to share and will only share information that is relevant to you and your family needs so that we can make sure you receive the support you require.

Your data may be accessible to staff providing Croydon Family Hub services. This includes a variety of different teams and which ones access your data will depend on what services are involved or may be of benefit to you and your family. The teams include:  

• Support and Interventions Team
• Parent and Infant Relationship Service (PAIRS) 
• Early Help MASH (the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub)
• Family Solutions Service
• Other council teams that may provide services as part of Family Hubs
• Health Teams including Midwifery and Health Visiting
• Services commissioned by the council

Anonymised data from your record will be used to help us monitor and improve services in the future. Once we collect your information, it may be used by other Family Hub partners where necessary to provide you with a complete service in compliance with all relevant data protection legislation. We will handle the information you have provided in line with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018.

Any organisations we pass your information to will have an information-sharing agreement with us to ensure they meet the standards of the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and will be covered by a legal basis allowing them to collect, use and share your personal information. The purpose of sharing information is with the intention of reducing the number of times families have to tell their story to services.

In some circumstances, information may be shared with third parties where there is a legal obligation to do so. If we are worried about the safety of you or your child, and believe we need to take action to protect you, or your child, from being harmed, we will discuss our concerns with you and, if possible, obtain your permission to disclose this information. We may share this information if we assess the risk to you or others to be serious.

There may also be situations when the risk to you or others is so great that we believe we need to share your information without delay. If this is the case, we will make sure that we record what information we share and our reasons for doing so. We will also let you know what we have done and why if we think it is safe to do so.

The lawful basis on which we use this information

The council considers that the lawful basis for processing the information you provide will be:

• Article 6 (a) Consent, and 
• Article 9 (a) Explicit Consent in respect of any Special Category Data (information regarding your: racial or ethnic origin; political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs; health or sexual orientation).

You have the right to withdraw or modify this consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent by contacting CRSProject@croydon.gov.uk and FamilyHubs@croydon.gov.uk.

The parent or carer is responsible for their child’s consent up to age 16. From age 16 onwards the young person can provide their own consent.

Storing this information

Personal data will not be retained for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected. There is usually a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time. This ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records. If you require more information about our retention schedule, please contact us at CRSProject@croydon.gov.uk.

Requesting access to your personal data

Under GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, parents or carers and young people have the right to request access to information that we hold about them. To make a request for your, or your child’s, personal information, contact the council’s Information Management Team at SAR@croydon.gov.uk.

Further information

The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us. Information about your data rights is listed in the council’s corporate privacy notice.

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we collect, store or use your personal information, please contact in the first instance CRSProject@croydon.gov.uk

For independent advice about data protection issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk.

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice at any time and will keep it under review. If we do make any changes, we will post the current version to our website at this address.