Privacy notice for Adoption Support Therapeutic and Signposting Service

What is the purpose of this document?

This privacy notice explains how we, Norfolk County Council, use your information when you self-refer into the Adoption Support service. If offered this service, you'll be entitled to a maximum sequence of 6 therapeutic counselling sessions, each lasting 1 hour.

Places with the provider Adoptionplus are limited, we may use your application to discuss a different service if one is available for you.

By 'use' we mean what we do with your information, and how we store and share it.

Further details about us and your rights

We provide the following details in our general privacy notice on our website:

Who we are (and contact details)
Your rights under the UK GDPR (including complaints)

You can also ask us for a copy of these details.

How we use your information

We will use your information to:

Consider your application to the Adoption Support therapeutic and signposting service
To share your application directly to the provider should you be suitable
Consider whether other services may be more beneficial to you (if so, we will signpost accordingly)

We also use your information to review the quality of our services and improve how we work. We will also receive outcome and success data from the provider, but we will not be able to identify you.

We also use your information in other ways compatible with the above.

What information we collect and use about you

We will collect and use:

Name
Email
Telephone Number
Status (birth parent/birth relative/adopted adult/adoptive parent)
Brief reason for self-referral

You do not need to give us your information. But if you do not give us the information, we will not be able to consider your application to provide you with the services listed in this privacy notice.

We also collect and use "special category" information about:

Health & Social Care (if this is disclosed as part of your brief reason for the self-referral)
By law we can only collect 'special category' information when it is relevant and for the purposes described above.

The UK GDPR makes sure we keep your special category information safe and secure. More details are on our website in the document named 'Special category data and criminal offences data policy'. This explains how we follow these legal duties.

Where we get your information from

We receive all of this information from you from your self-referral.

Who we share your information with

We share your information with:

The service provider (AdoptionPlus)
Teams within the County Council (where necessary)

All information is shared on a need-to-know basis. We do not share more than we need to.

We also share your information with companies that help us do our job. They also have to keep your information safe and only use it to help us. For example, this includes IT providers such as Microsoft.

We do not process your information outside of the UK and European Economic Area.

Our lawful basis for using your information

We have legal reasons under the UK GDPR to use your information because it is necessary:

For the performance of a task carried out in the public interest and the task or function has a clear basis in law
These statutory powers and duties are:

The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 Section 14 - applicable to Birth Parents
The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 Section 31 - applicable to Prospective Adopters
The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 - Part 2, Regulation 4 2c - applicable to Adopted Adults (persons)
The Adoption Information and Intermediary Services (Pre-Commencement Adoptions) Regulations 2005 Section 10 - applicable to Adopted Adults
The Disclosure of Adoption Information (Post-Commencement Adoptions) Regulations 2005, Part 5 - applicable to Adopted Adults
The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2004 - Part 2, Regulation 4 2f - applicable to Birth Relatives (related persons in relation to adoptive children).

We have legal reasons to use (including share) your special category information:

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 the same as the tasks in the public interest set out above.

How long we keep your information

When the information is no longer needed for the above reasons it will be securely deleted. If you do not receive a service, your personal information will be securely deleted.

If we need to use your information for research or reports, it will be anonymised, or pseudonimised, and any notes (handwritten or typed) from research sessions will be securely destroyed. The information will continue to be used in a summarised and anonymised or pseudonymised form in any published research reports or papers. If the published research is of historic interest it may be held in public archives indefinitely.

How we Keep your information

The information is securely stored electronically on the Council's SharePoint site. Information is also securely stored in other mediums, such as email accounts.

Automated decision making

We do not make automated decisions (including profiling) about you.

Changes to this notice

We update this privacy notice from time to time, so please review it often. The date below is updated every time this privacy notice is updated.

This privacy notice was created September 2025.