Youth Justice Service - Privacy Notice

Dudley Council - Youth Justice Service work with young people and partner agencies to prevent re-offending.

We identify risk factors in young people's lives, which make it more likely they will re-offend and put interventions in place to reduce the risks and prevent re-offending.

This is done with young people who appear before the courts and with young people on pre-court programmes and out of court disposals.

In order to provide you with high quality and safe services, which are relevant to your needs, the Youth Justice Service will collect and hold information about you. This may include: 

• Basic details such as your name, address, date of birth
• Parents/carers, family members - name, address, contact details 
• Housing records 
• Education records 
• Police reports 
• Information from the Youth Justice Service 
• Information from other professionals who may be involved with you e.g. CAMHS, substance misuse, speech and language 
• Information about victims of youth crime

We also collect the following special category data: 

• Gender 
• Ethnicity 
• Religion 
• Medical information 
• Information from other professionals who may be involved with you e.g. CAMHS, substance misuse, speech and language

We collect information about you in the following ways:

• Face to face 
• By secure email 
• By post
• By telephone

To enable us to provide services to you it is necessary for us to use your personal information to help assess your needs and identify the most appropriate services available. To do so we will use the following legal basis for sharing your information:

• Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

For special category data, which is more sensitive information, we rely on the following:

• Health and Social Care - we use it for the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services

Your personal information will be used to enable us to give you the best possible care and support. The data will be held in electronic and paper format and will be used for your care, protection and support.

Your information may also be used to provide assurance to the Council about the quality of services provided.

We will only share relevant information about you with other services when they are involved in your care and support or where there is a legal basis for doing so. There are ranges of professionals who may be involved in providing services to you and where appropriate will be provided with relevant information about you. Agencies we may need to share information with include the following:

• Constabulary 
• National Probation Service
• Health Services 
• HM Courts & Tribunals Service 
• Switch
• Education Services

There are other times not linked to your care and support where we may need to share your information lawfully. These include:

• Where there is a serious risk of harm to you or to others
• Where there are concerns for the welfare of a child 
• For the Prevention or detection of crime 
• Where a court order requires us to share information about you

The security of your personal information is important to us. The records we keep about you are secure and are confidential within the Council. The Council have a range of procedures, policies and systems to ensure that access to your records are controlled appropriately.

Anyone who receives information from us is also under a legal duty to only use the information for the purposes agreed and keep the information secure and confidential.

We must keep business records of our involvement with you. The type of service you receive will determine how long we have to keep your personal information.

Currently children’s records cannot be destroyed due to Government independent inquiries into child abuse. Information will not be destroyed until 6 years after the end of the inquiries or in accordance with our normal retention schedule (whichever is later).

Our corporate retention guidelines show how long we keep information for different services. Your records will be retained in accordance with Dudley Council records retention schedule as follows:

Parent Case Records

• On completion of parenting order or programme completion
• Prevention Case Records Following completion of the prevention programme:
  • Reduce non YJT information to basic information holding
  • 2 months dispose of all.
• Except where the Young Person is Looked After or subject to Child Protection: 
  • Looked after Children - 75 years from date of birth or if dies before age 18 for 15 years following the date of death.
  • Subject to Child Protection - 75 years from date of birth (If child dies before 18th birthday, date of death + 6 years

Offender Case Records; Pre Court Decisions and Sentences of Courts 

• Standard retention period is 25 years from birth with the following exceptions:
  • Looked after Children - 75 years from date of birth or if dies before age 18 for 15 years following the date of death.
  • Subject to Child Protection - 75 years from date of birth (If child dies before 18th birthday, date of death + 6 years

Victim Case Records

• On programme completion

We do not process your personal data outside of the EEC

At no time will your information be used or passed to others for marketing or sales purposes, or for any commercial use without your express consent.