Inclusion Service

The proper handling of personal information by Carmarthenshire County Council is very important to the delivery of our services and maintaining public confidence.

Personal data is any information that relates to a person who can be directly or indirectly identified from the information. The terms ‘information’ and ‘personal data’ are used throughout this privacy notice and have the same meaning.

To ensure that the Council treats personal information correctly, we seek to adhere in full to the requirements of Data Protection legislation.

This privacy notice has therefore been produced to explain as clearly as possible what we do with personal data.

Throughout this privacy notice, we use the acronym CYP to refer to children and young people. For the purposes of the Additional Learning Needs (ALN) Act, a child is defined as someone under the age of 16 and a young person is defined as someone between the ages of 16 and 25. This privacy notice applies to both children and young people who are being assessed for additional learning needs.

1. The purpose for which we use your personal data

The information we collect will be used to assess and support the Additional Learning Needs of the child or young person (CYP). The legal basis for the processing of this information is to comply with our statutory obligations to assess children's and young people's Additional Learning Needs under the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act. If you are the parent or guardian of the child or young person, this information is being collected and processed in order to support your child's education and development.

2. What type of information do we use?

We collect the following types of personal data to deliver this service:

  • CYP/parents/guardians name
  • CYP/parents/guardians address
  • YP/parents/guardians telephone number
  • YP/parents/guardians email address
  • CYP’s date of birth
  • CYP’s gender
  • CYP’s family composition
  • Parental responsibility information
  • Social circumstances, such as whether a child is Looked After
  • Images/photographs
  • Information about the CYP’s health, abilities and skills
  • Religious or philosophical beliefs
  • The language of the home

3. Do we use information received from other sources?

To provide this service, we collect information directly from the CYP/parents but also the following information from the school/FEI the CYP is attending:

  • CYP/parents/guardians name
  • CYP/parents/guardians address
  • YP/parents/guardians telephone number
  • YP/parents/guardians email address
  • CYP’s date of birth
  • Whether a child is Looked After
  • School attendance and educational attainment
  • Information about the CYP’s health, abilities and skills
  • Language at home and at school
  • Parental responsibility information

We may obtain medical information from NHS local health boards as part of the assessment process.

We may seek advice from the Council’s Educational Psychology service, as well as private educational professionals commissioned by parents, to support the decision-making process.

We may also ask Children’s social care services for advice, including their involvement with a child.

Limited information about criminal offences/convictions will also be obtained from the Council's Youth Offending team, where this is relevant and needed to inform the Local Authority if they have a duty to decide if the child or young person has ALN or to maintain their Individual Development Plan.

4. Transferring your information abroad

We use Microsoft Office 365 to process our electronic documents under the terms of a strict agreement, which safeguards this information. This personal data is hosted on servers outside the UK, but only in EU countries which are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation.

We don’t transfer any other information about the CYP/parents/guardians outside of the UK.

5. Who has access to your information?

To obtain personal data from the sources listed above, we provide them with the name, address and date of birth of the CYP.

Once we have obtained all of the information we need to carry support our decision-making process, this is then shared with a panel composed of Inclusion Managers, Educational Child Psychologists, Additional Learning Needs Advisory Teachers, Family Liaison Officers, headteachers and ALNCOs from schools which the CYP does not attend.

If  an Individual Development Plan (IDP) is prepared, a copy of the IDP is shared with the CYP, the school/FEI, and the child’s parents.

There are also other specific situations where we may be required to disclose information about the CYP  or the parents/guardians, such as:

  • Where the Council is required to provide the information by law
  • Where disclosing the information is required to prevent or detect a crime
  • Where disclosure is in the vital interests of the person concerned

6. How long we will keep your information

We will keep personal data regarding Additional Learning Needs assessments and decisions for 21 years after our last involvement with the CYP. This is in accordance with the Council’s Retention Guidelines.

7. Your Data Protection rights

You have the right to:

  • Obtain access to the personal data that Carmarthenshire Council is processing about you
  • Have any inaccurate or incomplete information rectified (corrected)
  • Withdraw your consent to processing, where this is the only basis for the processing
  • Make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the independent body in the UK which protects information rights

In some circumstances, you may have the right to:

  • Object to the processing of your personal information
  • The erasure of your personal data
  • Restrict the processing of your personal information
  • Data portability

8. Contact details

For more information regarding this privacy notice and your rights, please contact:

Data Protection Officer
Carmarthenshire County Council
County Hall
Carmarthen
SA31 1JP

Email: dataprotection@carmarthenshire.gov.uk

Contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office along with further guidance on Data Protection legislation can be found on the ICO website .

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