KCC Children, Young People and Education Parent Carer Panel privacy notice

Kent County Council collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

Kent County Council respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and last updated November 2024.

Who we are

Kent Family Hubs offer advice, support and services to children, young people and their families from newborns to 19 years old or up to 25 years old for SEND.

Parent Carer Panels, as part of the Kent Family Hub model, will offer a safe inclusive and welcoming space for all parents and carers, including fathers/male carers and seldom heard communities.

These panels will service as a forum for parents and carers to collaborate with the Family Hub workforce and partners in designing, evaluating and improving our support and services.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

Parent Carer Panel activity may collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

Name
Email address and phone number
Your postcode
Demographic information such age your age
How many children you have and their age(s)
Which Start for Life or Family Hubs services you have accessed
Video and audio recordings of meetings/interviews you are involved in.

We may also collect the following special category data (personal data which is more sensitive and is treated with extra care and protection) when you provide it to us:

Ethnicity/Racial Origin
Any disabilities as set out in the Equality Act 2010
Any accessibility, dietary and health requirements relevant to your participation
Belonging to any particular religion or belief
Sexual orientation
Gender and Gender Identification.

We will take notes during parent carer panel discussions, and we may take video or audio recordings of online (e.g. MS Teams) or face-to-face interviews, with your consent. These recordings could collect information about your experience of services and other topics that you may talk about such as mental health or financial hardship.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

To contact you to invite you to parent carer panels or send you updates on related Family Hub co-production opportunities.
To ensure that Parent Carer Panels are accessible and that we can cater to your individual needs (for example if you have dietary requirements or specific needs to help you engage in the project)
To ensure that Parent Carer Panels are inclusive and includes participants from a range of diverse backgrounds, including those seldom heard.
To publish Insights and feedback gathered but this will not involve sharing any personal or identifiable information.
To inform and deliver reports to the Department for Education (information used for this purpose would not identify individuals)

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to carry out tasks with your consent. We rely on the following lawful bases under UK GDPR:

To contact you about Parent Carer Panels, and to enable you to take part in panels, we rely on:

Article (6)(1)(a) - Consent: the individual has given clear consent to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

To process anonymised data when completing nationally required reports, we rely on:

Article (6)(1)(e) – public task: the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or for official functions (task or function has a clear basis in law).

If we need to collect special category (sensitive) personal information, we rely upon:

Article 9(2)(g) - Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(g) to process your special category data

These legal bases are underpinned by National Family Hub Guidance that dictates what actions can and should be taken by local authorities, including:

Keeping your personal information secure

Kent County Council will be record and store any personal data collected, and Insights and feedback gathered securely on internal systems managed by Compliance and Risk Team and our Core Plus Team.

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.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will keep your personal and special category data for up to 2 years after which point the information provided is made inaccessible to system users or securely destroyed.

If you do not wish to receive contact from us around Parent Carer Panels, you may withdraw your consent at any time, however we may still process some of your personal information in order to fulfil our reporting responsibilities.

Who we share your personal information with

We may share Insights and feedback gathered from parent carer panels, but this will not involve sharing any personal or identifiable information. People that we may share with include:

teams within Kent County Council working to improve outcomes for children and young people
commissioned providers of local authority services
schools
partner organisations signed up to the Kent & Medway Information Sharing Agreement, where necessary, which may include health visitors, midwives, housing providers, Police, school nurses, doctors, and mental health workers
Department for Education and other government departments as required
other organisations, including voluntary sector.

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law or in connection with legal proceedings.

We will share personal information with our legal and professional advisers in the event of a dispute, complaint, or claim. We rely on Article 9(2)(f) where the processing of special category data is necessary for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have rights which you can access free of charge which allow you to:

know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
ask to see what information we hold about you
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

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

object to how we are using your information
ask us to delete information we hold about you
have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
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 Information Commissioner's Office on individuals’ rights under the UK GDPR.

If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk.

Who to Contact

Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.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.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk.

The UK GDPR also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at their website or telephone 0303 123 1113.

For further information visit, please see the Kent County Council Privacy Statement.