This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about your child, how we collect, how we use and may share information about your child. We are required to give you this information under data protection law.
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (DMBC) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws. Our Data Protection and Information Governance Manager is Lewis Bourne.
Dudley Disability Services, Specialist Education, Speech and Language Centre works with children who have severe and complex Developmental Language Disorders/Speech, Language and Communication Needs and who have been referred to them through the National Health Service, Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapists. Their needs are deemed to be impacting upon their social, emotional and academic development. The Speech and Language Centre has Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapists, Specialist Teachers and Teaching Assistants based at the Centre as well as for Educational Outreach. Their input can be as part of a two-day placement at the Centre and/or work in their mainstream schools to support their DLD/SLCN.
Information collected by us
In the course of providing specialist support we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:
- personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, gender)
- special category characteristics (such as ethnicity, religion, medical information)
reasons for support (such as whether their needs are speech, speech and expressive or receptive language) - assessment and plan information (such as further details of barriers to learning, DLD/SLCN, strengths and needs, interventions and next steps to support outcomes)
- images, video and audio recordings, digital and paper records that support our work with you.
We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:
- current and previous involvement from other organisations (such as paediatricians, mainstream speech and language therapists, teachers, social workers, occupational therapists, specialist teachers, educational psychologists)
- schools, early years provisions and other setting information (such as attendance and exclusion information, national curriculum and progress)
- involvement with other DMBC children’s services teams from our existing records
How we use your personal information
We use your child’s personal information to:
- work with the child to gain an understanding of strengths and needs based on their DLD/educational skills
- assess and advise on support within the classroom or for the SLC
- undertake consultation with adults who work with the child or young person
- provide schools, settings and parents with a report to inform their ongoing support for a child or young person
- evaluate and quality assure the services we provide
- undertake research to help understand and improve the quality of education for children
- engage in supervision (discussions with other educational professionals) to maintain and develop our professional practice.
Children’s Services uses Power BI as a business intelligence analysis tool that can handle hundreds of thousands of lines of raw data and add value by categorising, calculating and visualising information to give insight.
Working with colleagues in Children’s Services, interactive business intelligence dashboards have been developed to provide analysis into things like, number of service users, number of children in need, different types of interventions applied etc.
These insights can be shared with those members of staff who need the analysis to help Children’s Services improve service operations. Access to personal identifiable level data is restricted to those who have a lawful basis to access it.
How long your personal data will be kept
We do not retain records once a child is no longer at the Speech and Language Centre or being seen on Educational Outreach caseload and all records are sent to school.
Reasons we can collect and use your child’s personal information
We collect and use your personal information to carry out tasks in the public interest. For additional/specific interventions we will seek your consent where this is required. If we need to collect special category (sensitive) personal information, we rely upon reasons of substantial public interest (equality of opportunity or treatment).
We share your personal information with:
- the host school where the Speech and Language Centre is based for emergency situations
- teams within DMBC working to improve outcomes for children and young people
- commissioned providers of local authority services (such as education services)
your child’s school/setting - partner organisations which may include doctors, paediatricians, health therapists and mental health workers
- supervisors within DMBC for professional practice
- We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law
Your Rights
- know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
- ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
- ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
- object to direct marketing
- make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office
- withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)
- ask us to delete information we hold about you
- have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
- object to how we are using your information
- stop us using your information in certain ways
We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note, your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.
For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under UK GDPR.
If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Corporate Information Governance Team or via information.governance@dudley.gov.uk
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
Please contact the Corporate Information Governance Team via information.governance@dudley.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.
The UK General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted on 03031 231113.