Privacy Policy
Children’s Centres and Family Hubs use information about children, young people and their families who receive a service, to carry out specific functions for which we have responsibility, for example:
- Support children, young people and their families; and monitor their progress
- Managing and planning overall service delivery
- Performance management of children, young people and their families services
- Managing information systems supporting children, young people and family services
- Providing early help services for families including vulnerable children and young people
- Working with other organisations to support the health and wellbeing of children, young people and their families, including sharing information and commissioning services
- Supporting families with information and access to local Children’s Centre services
- Enabling Children’s Centres to identify and target support to those families who do not currently access the centres at a point in life when they need the most support and where early intervention has the highest impact.
- Identifying those families who need support as part of an integrated approach to prevention, early intervention and working together to safeguard children
- To provide a service that improves outcomes for children, young people and their families through providing a range of universal and preventative services.
- Helping to prevent duplication of services
- To contact you regularly to promote our support and services and to let you know about Children’s Centre activities which may be of interest to you. We will also email / ring with helpful advice on parenting and raising children. You can stop receiving this information at anytime.
- Referrals are received from parents and carers, health visitors, midwives, schools and other agencies or from Bedford Borough’s Early Help Practitioners.
Bedford Borough Council will process the data for the following purposes of processing
A registration form will be filled by a parent or carer, requesting personal information of parent and any children under 5. This form will be scanned and uploaded onto liquid logic, a password
protected software database which Early childhood Partnership (ECP) staff will have access to.
The registration form will be processed to enable a new contact/service user to be created on Liquid logic. The purpose of this is to record any sessions, group work or 1-2-1 support or casework the service user has attended including, any contact that has been made via ECP staff or service user. This is required as Bedford Borough have a contractual agreement with ECP with Key Practice Indicators, which are monitored at quarterly meetings. The data on Liquid logic is pulled into Performance reports to illustrate and identify progress what is going well and where further work is required in order to meet KPI specification.
The registration form will require consent to contact either via phone or email. This data will be processed onto Liquid logic too. The purpose of processing this data is to collate all email addresses and phone numbers to mass mail/text to inform existing users of services, activities, and information on upcoming events.
Children’s Centres collect and process the following information:
- Personal information of primary and secondary carer and children such as name, date of birth, address and contact details. We also hold identifiable information such as NHS numbers
- Characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, disability, home circumstances, language and health information
- Significant people in the family, and their details
- Any additional personal information that is necessary for us to assess and provide children, young people and families with the service they require
Bedford Borough’s Children’s Centres collect and lawfully process information about children and families to whom we provide services to, under the following:
- Performance of a contract
- Children Act 1989 (section 17 and 47)
- Children Act 2004 (section 10 and 11)
- Children and Families Act 2014
- Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015
- The Human Rights Act (Article 8)
- The Common Law Duty of Confidentiality
- Caldicott Principles
- Ofsted.
- Statutory Early Years Foundation Stage
We process personal data for the following reasons:
- Processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of you or of another person
- Processing is necessary for the performance of a task / contract carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in Bedford Borough Council.
We process special categories data for the following reasons:
- You have given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes
- Processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or of another person where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent.
In some cases we may need your explicit consent to process your personal data, if we do we will always make this clear.
Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject.
Children Centres may share relevant information within Bedford Borough Council (for internal use) to support children young people and their families. Services might include:
- Children’s social care
- Early Help Practitioners
- Youth and family support
- Housing services
- Education inclusion services
- Welfare rights
- Revenues and benefits
In addition to sharing within the Council information about children, young people and their families to deliver best services, it may sometimes also be necessary to share information with external organisations. These organisations might include:
- Health Services (School nurses, GPs, consultants)
- Schools and Academies
- Police
- Probation services
- Midwifery and Health Visiting as part of the Healthy Child Programme and Bedford’s Integrated Care Pathways
- Department for Work and Pensions.
- Housing associations such as BPHA etc
We will not give / share information about you to anyone outside of the Council unless required to do so by law in delivering our statutory functions, or such as actions are necessary for safeguarding children or to deliver the services which you have requested.
Personal data will be stored for the length of the children centre contract, until 30th September 2026 with a possible extension to 30th September 2028. Details stored on liquid logic will be stored in a secure password protected software database for the length of the product and licensing agreement with Bedford Borough Council. In line with Liquid Logic Data protection agreement.