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Specialist Teaching Team

Learning Support Hub and Specialist Teaching Team Privacy Notice

City of York Council (CYC) current data protection notification is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – reference Z5809563. We regularly review this privacy notice, and it was last updated in August 2023.

CYC is committed to ensuring that personal data is handled in accordance with the principles set out in data protection legislation and guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when we collect personal information about you, and it applies to the Learning Support Hub and to the Specialist Teaching Team.

CYC is the controller for this information unless we specifically state otherwise in this privacy notice.

You can contact the council’s Data Protection Officer by email: [email protected].

This privacy notice should be read in conjunction with other relevant CYC privacy notices, policies, and procedures.

When appropriate we will provide a ‘just in time’ notice to cover any additional processing activities not mentioned in this document.

In this notice:

We get information about you from the following sources:

  • directly from you
  • completion of the Request for Support form either electronically or a paper copy.
  • meetings with you and your child/young person
  • consultation with other professionals including during the Learning Support Hub Panel meetings
  • professional/relevant service reports or CYC databases
  • post, email, and telephone conversations as appropriate
  • gathering of information in an Education, Health and Care Plan, My Support Plan, My Agreed Outcomes or the setting’s equivalent paperwork
  • Section 23 notifications from health partners
  • other local authorities where appropriate

When we ask you for personal data, we will:

  • ensure you know why we need it
  • only ask for what is necessary for the work we are undertaking
  • ensure access is only given to authorised staff on a need-to-know basis

We ask that you:

  • give us accurate information
  • inform us of any changes
  • tell us as soon as possible if you notice mistakes in the information we hold about you/your child

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We will collect your child or young person’s personal data and special categories of personal data, such as:

  • names
  • contact details
  • any special educational needs
  • why the referral has been made
  • school history
  • progress, attainment, attendance, any exclusions
  • medical information
  • NHS patient number
  • UPN (unique pupil number)
  • information relating to relevant social care needs
  • information about family, household and/or carers of the child or young person
  • photographs and / or video recordings of your child where we have your explicit and informed consent first

It will also include the details of other professionals working with your child, including the details of the SEN coordinator (SENCo) in setting or their counterpart.

We will use your information to:

  • ensure that services and practitioners understand how they can best help you
  • help inform which services and interventions require commissioning across the City of York to support families and communities
  • complete the detail needed in an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) to describe your child’s needs, the provision, outcomes, and actions from planning meetings
  • create statistics that are anonymous and cannot be linked back to you or your family for the purposes of local and national surveys
  • support our work with your child in his/her school or setting, or in your home or another setting for those children who are unable to attend school because of ill health
  • keep photographs and / or video recordings of your child for record keeping and assessment arrangements. Photographs will not be used for any other purpose without asking for your explicit and informed consent first
  • provide the child or young person with appropriate services
  • help inform which services and interventions require commissioning across the City of York to support families and communities
  • to ensure compliance and high-quality standards through audits, quality monitoring etc
  • ‘sign post’ the family or settings to appropriate support
  • measure whether our services are improving life for children, young people, and families
  • help us develop and improve our services
  • administer and protect public funds

We will use the information to create reports or statistics that are anonymous and cannot be linked back to you or your family or individuals. For example, we could use these statistics to:

  • see how the council and its partners are supporting families and individuals
  • help design better services
  • inform funding decisions
  • inform performance management
  • inform development of good practice
  • contribute to national surveys and government returns, for example, to the Department for Education (DfE)

When we use MS Teams to provide secure online conversations, we may record and or transcribe these and you can find out more about this at Microsoft Office 365 (MS365) Teams Meeting recording and transcription privacy notice.

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We do not carry out any automated decision-making without any human intervention in the Learning Support Hub.

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Please see our Cookie Policy for further information about the information we collect automatically when you use our website.

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As we provide services to children or young people, the information in the relevant parts of this notice applies to children and young people, as well as adults.

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The information you provide to us helps us to support children, young people and families and we are required to use the information in order to meet our legal responsibilities in accordance with the Children and Families Act 2014.

The information you provide enables us to fulfil our duties including:

  • statutory advice to the Local Authority as part of an education, health and care needs assessment
  • monitoring of provision and outcomes as part of the annual review process for children and young people who have an EHCP
  • monitoring of the quality of provision for children and young people with special educational needs
  • allocating specialist support to support children and young people to support them to meet their outcomes
  • providing advice, guidance, and training to support settings to ensure children and young people thrive and meet their agreed, holistic, outcomes

The information you give us ensures that we can offer an appropriate assessment of need and provide recommendations regarding special educational provision.

We will ask for your explicit and informed consent for any photographs and / or video recordings of your child for record keeping and assessment arrangements and will not be used for any other purpose without asking for your further explicit and informed consent for any new purpose.

This means that any personal data including special category data that we process about children, young people and their families is done so in accordance with Article 6 and 9 of the UK GDPR and Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018).

The legal basis for processing your personal data is in accordance with the following:

  • Article 6(1)(a) - consent
  • Article 6(1)(c) so we can comply with our legal and statutory duties including, but not limited to, those which apply under the legislation shown below 
    • Children and families act 2014
    • SEND Regulations 2014
    • SEND Code of Practice 2014
  • Article 6(1)(d) to protect your vital interests or those of another person
  • Article 6(1)(e) for the performance of our public task
  • Article 6(1)(f) for the purposes of our legitimate interest

Where the information we process is special category data, for example your health data, the additional bases for processing that we rely on are:

  • Article 9(2)(a) – consent
  • Article 9(2)(b) which relates to carrying out our legal obligations and the safeguarding of your fundamental rights including, but not limited to, those which apply under the legislation shown below
    • Children and families act 2014
    • SEND Regulations 2014
    • SEND Code of Practice 2014
  • Article 9(2)(c) to protect your vital interests or those of another person where you are incapable of giving your consent
  • Article 9(2)(g) – where processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest

Some of the Schedule 1 conditions for processing special category and criminal offence data require an Appropriate Policy Document (APD) to be in place, that sets out and explains the procedures for securing compliance with the principles in Article 5 and policies regarding the retention and erasure of such personal data. This document explains this processing and satisfies the requirements of Schedule 1, Part 4 of the DPA 2018 and supplements this privacy notice.

Our Appropriate Policy Document provides further information about this processing.

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We only keep your personal data up to the age of 25 years for non-statutory files and 35 years from closure for statutory (EHC Plan).

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We share information about you, your child/young person with other relevant professionals who are already involved, or who become involved, during the time that they are working with the Specialist Teaching Team or with outreach services from specialist settings to provide co-ordinated support and to improve multi-agency working.

Below is a list of parties with whom we regularly share information:

  • educational settings / schools as well as vocational settings
  • local area early help teams
  • CAMHS and other professionals from Health, Social Care and Early Help teams including the Healthy Child Service
  • York Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Specialist Services including Educational Psychologists and services which support transition to post 16 provisions
  • Early Years, Childcare Quality Improvement team and Inclusion Support
  • the Learning Support Hub panel

We are required by law to pass on personal child data to the Department for Education (DfE), other Government departments and our partner organisations who use it to help with policy development, service delivery, performance management, funding and to assist with the development of good practice.

We may be required or permitted, under data protection legislation, to disclose your personal data without your explicit consent, for example if we have a legal obligation to do so, such as when we feel that you or others are at risk.

We will always satisfy ourselves that we have a lawful basis on which to share the information and document our decision making and satisfy ourselves we have a legal basis on which to share the information.

Additionally, we are required under the Public Records Act 1958 (as amended) to transfer records to the City or National Archives (TNA) for permanent preservation. Some of these records may include the personal data of our current and former employees. Full consideration will be given to Data Protection and Freedom of Information legislation when making decisions about whether such records should be open to the public.

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Where we have data processors and/or third parties providing parts or all of our services for us, we have contracts in place with them.

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We do not routinely transfer personal data outside of the UK but when this is necessary, we ensure that we have appropriate safeguards in place and that is done in accordance with the UK data protection and privacy legislation.

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We are committed to keeping your information safe and secure. There are several ways we do this, such as:

  • IT security safeguards such as firewalls, encryption, and anti-virus software
  • on-site security safeguards to protect physical files and electronic equipment
  • training for all staff and elected councillors
  • policies and procedures

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To find out about your rights under Data Protection law, you can go to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

You can also find information about your rights at Our Privacy Notice – City of York Council.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, want to exercise your rights, or if you have a complaint about how your information has been used, email: [email protected] or telephone: 01904 554145, or write to the:

Data Protection Officer
City of York Council
West Offices
Station Rise
York
YO1 6GA

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Glossary of terms used:

  • CPP – Child Protection Plan
  • EHA – Early Help Assessment
  • EHCP – Education, Health, and Care Plan
  • MSP – My Support Plan

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