Privacy notice - Early Years Support Service

Local Authority Service for early identification, assessment and intervention for children aged 0-4 years with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

The EYSS provides outreach support (for staff) & inclusion support (for children) in mainstream early years settings as well as training.

The EYSS Service includes the Cleveland Unit Child Development Centre (CUCDC) which provides identification and assessment, specialist teaching, intervention and therapy for children with the most complex special educational needs as well as support for their families.

Initially the data we collect comes from the referral form which you complete to access our service for your child. Over time, as we work with your child, we will work with you to add to this data with assessments, observations and other records to enable us to ensure your child gets the best support possible.

We may collect:

• Personal information (such as name, date of birth, gender, address)
• Personal characteristics (such as ethnicity - you do not have to give this information if you do not want to)
• Information relating to a child’s special educational needs and/or disability
• Where necessary, information relating to episodes of being a child in need or looked after (such as referral information, assessment information, Section 47 information, Initial Child Protection information and Child Protection Plan information).

Whilst the majority of information you provide to us is essential in order for us to perform our duty to identify, assess and meet your child’s special educational needs/disabilities, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. In order to comply with the data protection legislation, we will tell you whether you are required to provide certain information to us or if you have a choice in this.

We collect and process information about children to whom we provide services under the following legislation:

• Children Act 1989
• Section 3 of the Children & Families Act 2014 regarding  children with special educational needs
• The Equality Act 2010
• Section 3 of the EYFS Statutory Framework
• SEND Code of Practice 2015
• Section 5.2 of the Government guidance on high needs funding here

We may also process special categories of your personal information if you choose to provide us with this information.

Processing of this special category data is helpful to us carrying out our obligations under the legislation as detailed above and in the course of our legitimate activities as a Local Authority, this may include your race, ethnicity, religion, health, genetics.

• To identify, assess and support children’s SEN/D and monitor their progress
• To support other early years settings to do this
• To identify the support your child will need in full time school
• To provide children with pastoral care
• To assess the quality of our services
• To evaluate and improve our policies and practices

Information may be shared with, (and we receive information from) other organisations who are involved with your child.

We may also enter into specific information sharing arrangements with partners such as local authorities where it would support our statutory functions. Any information sharing is managed in accordance with relevant privacy and data protection legislation and is usually anonymised for such purposes.

• Department for Education (DfE)
• National Health Service (NHS)
• Public Health Services

We need to share information about your child in order to make sure the service or support provided meets your child’s individual needs and is of a high quality

Access to your information is governed and restricted. Only those who work with you and your families where appropriate will have access to your information.

Details of how long we retain records, can be found within the document Middlesbrough Council's retention periods for children's records.

Your information would only ever be transferred should you move or be transferred to an overseas provider, this would be upon request and under strict governance and security measures in order to maintain the integrity and security of your information and only ever to safeguard you.

We will not direct any marketing to you, we may direct you to support services which you would then engage with should you so wish to.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk