Early childhood and family service privacy notice

What this document is for

This privacy notice provides information on how Norfolk County Council (the County Council) uses your personal information in respect of the Early Childhood and Family Services we provide to you. By 'use' we mean the various ways it may be processed, including storing and sharing the information.

In summary this document:

Sets out how we promise to look after your personal information
Describes how we collect, use and share your personal information and
Tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you

Who we are

The County Council is the "data controller" for the personal information held about you by the Early Childhood and Family Service in Norfolk. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we "process" (that is, collect, hold, use and disclose) your personal information.

Our address is Norfolk County Council, County Hall, Martineau Lane, Norwich NR1 2DH.

The County Council has responsibility for providing the ECFS but we have arranged for Action for Children to run this service on our behalf. Action for Children (AfC) uses your personal information as data processor on behalf of the County Council and the County Council has entered in to a contract with AfC to ensure that your information is kept safely and securely as required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Who provides this information

We collect information from you and your family.

We may also receive information about you from agencies and organisations that you have been involved with including:

Health visitors
Midwives
Provide CIC
Early Years Settings eg nurseries and child minders

The kind of information we collect and use about you

The types of information we may receive from people and organisations includes:

Your contact details
Services that you use and the support provided to you
Reasons why you use the services
Questionnaires completed by you
Evaluation results
Attendance information
Employment and family status

We may also collect information about:

Racial or ethnic origin
Special educational needs and health data including any disabilities and medical conditions.

This information is classed as "special category data" under the GDPR. We may only collect and use these types of data when it is relevant and such data will be collected as part of the case work records and information we hold as part of the referral / assessment / case work records and information we hold.

The GDPR includes safeguards to protect the use of your special category data. Further details can be found on our website in the document named 'Special category data and criminal offences data policy' which sets out our procedures for compliance with the principles of the GDPR and the retention and erasure of this information.

What we use your personal information for

We use your personal information to provide services to you and your children aged 0 to 5 years.

The services include:

Advice during pregnancy and when your baby is born
Parenting advice and support
Sessions to support your child's learning
Family health services
Advice about adult learning, training and employment
Family support

We provide more details of the services on our website at www.norfolk.gov.uk/earlychildhood

We also use this information to assess the quality of our services to families and to evaluate and improve our policies and procedures.

We may also use information in other ways compatible with the above. This will include supporting the work of other public bodies providing services to families with children aged 0-5 years.

How the law protects you and the legal basis for processing your information

There must be a lawful basis (or justifiable reason) for us to collect, store, use and disclose your personal information. We have legal grounds to process this information as it is reasonable and necessary for the fulfilment a public task under section 537A of the Education Act 1996 and section 83 of the Children Act 1989.

We have legal grounds to process special category data where it is in the exercise of a statutory function and it is in the necessary for reasons in the substantial public interest. The statutory functions are section 537A of the Education Act 1996 and section 83 of the Children Act 1989.

Who we share your personal data with

We may disclose your personal information to your family including persons with parental responsibility as well as public bodies and other organisations, in particular:

Health bodies - GPs, the Healthy Child Programme and midwives
Schools
Early years settings (nurseries and childminders)
Other Norfolk County Council services including Libraries and Family Information Service

How long we use your information for

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

Once you are no longer require services from us, we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our information retention schedule.

How this information is stored

The information is stored electronically on Norfolk County Council servers.

Whether this information is transferred to other countries

We do not transfer your information to other countries outside of the European Economic Area.

Automated decisions

We do not make automated decisions about you.

Your rights under the GDPR

You have the following rights to (but note, these rights do not apply in all circumstances):

Be informed about the processing of your personal information. This is the purpose of this notice
Have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed
Object to the processing of your personal data
Restrict processing of your personal information
Have your personal data erased ("the right to be forgotten")
Move, copy or transfer your personal information ("data portability") in some circumstances
Request access to your personal information and information about how the County Council processes it
Withdraw any consent you have given for the processing of personal data at any time

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Information Compliance Team by:

Emailing the Information Compliance Team on information.management@norfolk.gov.uk
Writing to the Information Compliance Team, Norfolk County Council, County Hall, Martineau Lane, Norwich NR1 2DH

Questions or complaints

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, you can write to the DPO by letter to the DPO, Norfolk County Council, County Hall, Martineau Lane, Norwich NR1 2DH or by email to dpo@norfolk.gov.uk

You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. The ICO can be contacted:

By writing to the ICO, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
By telephoning 0303 123 1113
Via the ICO website (opens new window)

Links to other websites

Where this notice applies to information collected or processed on a website, please note this privacy notice only applies to the County Council's website and ceases to apply when you leave our pages. If you follow links to other organisations websites, even if you follow a link which we have provided, it is suggested you take the time to read the privacy notices on the websites you visit.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

Date of notice

This notice was last updated in February 2023.