Early help

This privacy notice explains what personal information is collected, what it is used for and who it is shared with.  It also describes why we require your data, and the legal basis on which we does this.

This privacy notice relates to the offer of Early Help.  It provides additional information that specifically relates to this particular approach, and should be read together with Manchester City Councils corporate privacy notice, which provides more detail.

Early Help uses personal information, such as names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers and email addresses.
In order to provide you with help and match you and your family with the best support for your particular needs, we also need to collect some information about you which is more sensitive (known as special category personal information’).  This may include information about you and your child(ren)’s:
•    gender 
•    ethnicity 
•    language 
•    nationality 
•    religion 
•    country of birth 
•    NHS number 
•    GP details 
•    health visitor details
•    education details
•    social care status

We use your personal data for the following reasons:

• to provide you with help by referring you to suitable partner agencies which match your needs, so that they can assess what support will be most effective, and quickly plan how best to work with you and your family 
• to check how we are doing, and whether we are having a positive impact - this may include getting feedback from you 
• to promote the support we provide - if we have links with a service which we think would help you and your family 
• to keep our records and accounts up to date, so we can track what support we have provided and to who 
• to generate statistics about who uses our services.  This helps us make decisions such as where to use our resources to ensure each of our services reach the people who need them and are as effective as possible. When generating statistics all data is anonymised 
• assess performance and set targets for Early Help across the City.

National research: at a national level, the Department of Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities has commissioned the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to undertake national research to evaluate the effectiveness of early intervention services.

Local authorities and national government departments are being asked to contribute to this research study.  This means that basic personal information supplied by us about individual family members (such as name, address, date of birth and sex) together with family level information is to be linked with personal information held by national government departments.

This research aims to compare the outcomes between those families supported through early help and those who are not.  This will determine whether this new way of working changes lives for the better by for example, reducing offending, truancy and getting people ready for work.  This will also help inform improvements to our services overtime.

Personal information linked for research purposes at national level will:

• be anonymised after it has been linked so as to limit any chance of families and individuals being identified 
• be kept securely to prevent any unauthorised use 
• not be used for making decisions about families or individuals 
• not be shared back with the local authority 
• be destroyed once the research project is concluded. 

The national departments involved in this research are:

• Ministry of Justice (Police National Computer and prisons database) 
• Department for Education (National Pupil Database and individualised learner record) 
• Department for Work and Pensions (Work & Pensions Longitudinal Study) 
• Health & Social Care Information Centre (Hospital Episodes Statistics, Mental Health minimum dataset, improving access to psychological therapies and maternity and children’s dataset) 
• Public Health England (national drug treatment monitoring system) 
• National Crime Agency (crime mapping database)
• Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities
•  

The lawful basis we rely on for processing your personal information is:

• where it is necessary for the performance of our public tasks (Article 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR’)).
•  

We collect and use special category personal information by relying on the lawful basis that processing is necessary for the:

• reasons of substantial public interest (Article 9(1)(g) of the UK GDPR)
• purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the Council or of you in the field of employment and social security and social protection law (Article 9(2)(b) of the UK GDPR);
• 
   

The personal information we use for families is not always the same; we only collect personal information where it is necessary to do so.  We are provided with information about you and your family from:
•    You and your family 
•    Greater Manchester Police 
•    Education providers e.g. nurseries, schools and colleges 
•    GPs 
•    Health visitors 
•    Housing providers 
•    Local Job Centres 
•    Victim Support 
•    Youth Justice and Probation Services 
•    Social Care services 
•    Voluntary and community services

Your personal data is shared securely with the following organisations only where it is both necessary and appropriate to do so:
•    Education Providers e.g. nurseries, schools and colleges
•    Social Care services
•    GPs
•    Health Visitors
•    Counselling Services
•    Housing Providers
•    Local Job Centres
•    Financial Advisors
•    Greater Manchester Police
•    Victim Support
•    Youth Justice and Probation Services
•    Voluntary and Community Sector Bodies

Your personal data is not subjected to automated decision making or profiling.

Our retention schedule sets out how long we keep personal information for.

You can find out more about your rights regarding the personal information used for this service. Your rights apply to the information held by the Council as a data controller, and the information we hold on behalf of the other data controllers.

If you have any questions or concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you're unhappy about how we process your information.
 

We may change this privacy notice from time to time. Tell us if you want to know when we change this notice, or any related documents.