We keep the Early Help Privacy Notice under review. It was last reviewed and updated in May 2022.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice contact the council’s Data Protection Officer.
View the privacy and transparency information for all of the City of York Council (CYC).
- collecting personal data
- using personal data
- our legal basis for using personal data
- sharing personal data
- retaining personal data
- further processing of personal data
- your rights relating to personal data
Collecting personal data
We'll collect your information when you contact us or are referred to us, giving your consent for Early Help support, and this privacy notice explains how we will use it.
We will:
- only ask you for the information that is necessary to provide our services to you e.g. your name, contact details, relevant information about any members of your household who will be in receipt of the support
- protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t
- ensure you know if you have a choice about giving us information
- make sure we don’t keep it for longer than is necessary
We ask that you:
- give us accurate information
- tell us as soon as possible of any changes
- tell us as soon as possible if you notice mistakes in the information we hold about you
If you do not provide the information we ask for, we may not be able to provide you with the information or service you need.
Using personal data
The delivery model for Early Help in York is the Supporting Families programme. This programme works on the basis of 4 principles being in place for a family:
- a whole family assessment
- an action plan
- a lead worker
- signed consent
Your information is collected when you consent to you and your family receiving Early Help support from the City of York Council and/or partner agencies. By partner agencies, we mean:
- schools
- childcare
- health services
- police
- voluntary or charity organisations
The support you receive may include an assessment of need, targeted support based on the need within your family and signposting to other relevant support that may help you.
When you or your family are referred to or approach City of York Council for help, you yourselves are usually the first and most important source of information about your circumstances.
We will use your information to:
- ensure that services and practitioners understand how they can best help you
- help inform what services and interventions require commissioning across the City of York to support families and communities
When your support from City of York Council and/or partner agencies comes to an end, you may be asked for feedback about the service.
We'll use information about you and your family to create statistics and reports that are anonymous and cannot be linked back to you or your family. We will use statistics to see how the Council and its partners are supporting families, to help design better services for families and to contribute to national surveys and in reports and returns to government where required.
Our legal basis for using personal data
The council and its partners collects and uses your information with your consent when you contact or are referred to us.
You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting earlyhelp@york.gov.uk or your named lead worker.
Sharing personal data
It is sometimes important to share your information with or request information from other council services and external agencies or organisations, as this can be vital to the provision of co-ordinated and seamless services which are right for you, and/or your family and it may help to prevent you from repeating the same information.
These may include:
- City of York Council services (such as children, young people, adult, family and housing services)
- Education Services and schools
- North Yorkshire Police and Probation Services
- health providers (including GPs, midwives, Health Visitors, substance misuse and mental health services)
- local housing providers (Home Group, York Housing Association, Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust)
- Department for Work and Pensions (including the Job Centre)
- community and voluntary Services (such as Citizen’s Advice Bureau, domestic abuse services, victim support services)
- childcare providers
If we feel we need to discuss your situation with other agencies, who are not listed in the section above, we'll always seek your consent to do so, unless the law requires or permits us to share it for another reason, or for example, it is necessary to do so to protect you or others from harm, a crime has or may be committed, fraud or tax investigations, or where there might be a child or adult at risk.
Retaining personal data
We'll keep your personal data for 10 years after you stop working with our service and City of York Council and then we will delete or destroy it securely.
At the end of the retention period, we may pass any relevant information to the City Archives where it is required or appropriate to do so.
Further processing of personal data
If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we'll provide you with a new notice.
The new notice will:
- explain this new use before we start the processing
- set out the relevant purposes and processing conditions
Where and whenever necessary, we'll seek your consent to the new processing, if we start to use your personal data for a purpose not mentioned in this Privacy Notice.
Your rights relating to personal data
When we collect your personal data we'll tell you how we are going to use it. Where we process your personal data, you have a number of rights under data protection law.
See further details of your rights relating to personal data.