Privacy notice - School Readiness

Middlesbrough Council’s School Readiness team is responsible for collecting and sharing information in a number of ways which are outlined below:

Children’s centre: Middlesbrough Children’s centre offers all families with children under 5 a range of Early Help services, information and support in their local community including: 

• Access to health and midwifery services
• Play and learning sessions
• Information, Advice & Guidance in relation to you, your baby and family 
• Parenting programmes and support

To ensure the Children’s centre can offer you the most appropriate services we need to collect some information about you and your family and we do this via a number of means, namely Children’s centre registration forms, pink slips, A2YO registration forms, change of details forms and activity attendance sheets. The data we collect includes:

• Full name
• Address
• Telephone numbers
• Email address
• Date of birth
• Family make-up
• Pregnancy details (if applicable)
• Attendance at activities

We use this information so that we can provide you and your family with the best possible help and advice and to get your child ready for school; to enable the Council to assess how well the Children’s centre is doing and to ensure that the Council, through their Children’s centre, are fulfilling their statutory obligations under the Childcare Act 2006.

We may share information with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) when they inspect the Children’s centre to ensure we are delivering our services to you effectively.  Ofsted don’t process any information about individual children, but it does use information about our activities to help make decisions about the quality of our services.

Funded childcare: the team provides childcare settings/provider’s with access to an online eligibility checking service allowing checks to be made as to whether your child is eligible for a free 2, 3 or 4 year old early learning placement.  In this respect, Middlesbrough Council is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act. We receive data from the national Eligibility Checking Service (ECS) about eligible children which we must share with early learning providers in Middlesbrough in order to deliver an effective service. Information we hold about you includes your name, address, contact details, email address, date of birth, National Insurance number and/or NASS number and your child’s name, address and date of birth.

The data you provide will only be stored on the Council’s Capita electronic system and be used to:

• Correspond with you regarding your application
• Check with the appropriate Government departments (HMRC and DWP) whether your child is eligible to receive a free early learning childcare placement
• Inform early year’s providers if there is a change in the child’s entitlement status
• Ensure accuracy of records across the Local Authority and to check against fraud

Data agreements are in place to ensure that:

• Only nominated representatives are able to access eligibility information
• The data cannot be used in any way that would affect an individual’s entitlement to benefits or services, other than the intended application for a free early learning placement
• The data in any published reports is anonymised and it will be impossible for any individuals to be identified
• All data is transferred, handled and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act
• Appropriate measures are in place to prevent unauthorised access and use of your data

Making sure that the information held is kept safe is extremely important to us. The School Readiness team store all information securely and it can only be accessed by those who need it. We store your information for a period of 7 years, after which it is deleted from our data system.

Your information will be retained by us in our electronic system for up to 7 years so we can continue to provide you with a service and in line with the Limitations Act 1980.

We do not send your personal information outside of the European Economic Area to be processed.

At no time will your information be passed to organisations external to us and our partners for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

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