Privacy notice for adult social care and support services

Our general privacy information is available at www.southglos.gov.uk/privacy.

This privacy notice applies to adult social care and support services provided by South Gloucestershire Council including mental health services provided in partnership with Avon and Wiltshire NHS Partnership Trust.

We process personal information in order to carry out basic administration and delivery of adult social care and support services within community, residential and health care settings. We do this either directly or jointly with partners, and commissioned private and third sector providers including:

• assessing the physical and mental health, learning and behavioural, financial social care needs, as appropriate, of adults and or their carers/designated representative/holders of power of attorney/Court Appointed Deputies, and providing the appropriate care package if required
• assessing the mental health care needs, including in specific circumstances the Deprivation of Liberty, of service users and or their carers and providing the appropriate care package if required
• maintaining our own accounts and records
• supporting and managing our employees
• awarding and managing contracts with social care providers as commissioned by us and to ensuring the quality of care to our service users
• shaping the current and future social care provider market by consulting with service users and or their carers or representatives
• providing ‘signposting’ services for adult social care-related advice and guidance
• providing a complaints service if things go wrong
• safeguarding adults at risk
• for the prevention of crime
• compliance with regulatory and inspection regimes (for example Ofsted and Care Quality Commission), including providing anonymised statistics

You should be aware that the information we have been provided with, in relation to the above service, includes sensitive data about your health.

We will use your information according to the UK Data Protection laws and have established that we are undertaking our legal obligations as described in the Care Act (2014), the Mental Health Act (2007) and the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and associated statutory guidance. This is in accordance with the lawful conditions defined in Article 6(1)(c), (d) and (e) of the GDPR/Data Protection Act 2018. That is our legal obligations, your vital interests and substantial public interest in delivery of these services,. The lawful condition for processing your sensitive data is defined in Article 9(2)(h), the necessity of delivering adult health and social care services.

We commission care providers to carry out the provision of these services on our behalf. This would only happen following conversations with you or your advocate, including seeking your consent to share information with the providers.

Your information is not transferred and stored in countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK for the provision of this service.

Personal information collected and lawful basis

The adult social care service process personal information, which is relevant to individual cases. It may include but is not limited to the following:

• personal details, for example: name, age, address, school and family details
• contact information, for example: telephone numbers, email address
• personal reference numbers, for example: social care unique customer reference number, National Insurance Number, NHS number* (this is to ensure that we are using the same number between organisations in order to identify you)
• employment, education or training details
• financial details for funding assessment purposes
• lifestyle and social circumstances
• opinions and decisions
• records of complaints
• safeguarding reports
• visual images, personal appearance and behaviour

*NHS number is accessed through an NHS service called the Personal Demographic Service (PDS).  We send basic information such as your name, address and date of birth to the PDS in order to find your NHS number so that we can add this along with other information we hold about you on our adult care case management system.

We may also process some special category (sensitive) information, which is relevant to individual cases but may include some but is not limited to:

• physical or mental health details
• racial or ethnic origin
• religious or other beliefs
• offences (including alleged offences), criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences
• political affiliation and opinions
• sexual orientation

The legal bases for processing this personal information are:

• compliance with a legal obligation
• contract for the supply of services
• explicit consent
• legitimate interests for the purposes of managing employees

How we will use your information

We will use your information to provide the above service you have requested whilst complying with the established lawful conditions.

Who we can share your information with

We may need to share the personal information you have given to us,  or that we have collected about you, with partner organisations where relevant to the individual and/or their care provision. These include but are not limited to:

• police and probation service
• Department of Health and Social Care
• health services – GPs, dental practices, opticians, ambulance services, hospitals, Avon and Wiltshire (NHS) Partnership Trust, North Bristol NHS Trust, University Bristol Hospital NHS Trust, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)
• regulatory inspection regimes – Care Quality Commission, Ofsted
• statistical, anonymised data is shared with NHS Digital
• schools/colleges
• housing agencies and providers
• commissioned Advocacy providers
• care home and other social care providers
• utility companies

Representatives who act on your behalf should you lack the mental capacity to make decisions regarding your care. These include but are not limited to:

• Independent Mental Capacity Advocate (IMCA)
• those with lasting power of attorney
• court-appointed deputy
• nominated representative/nearest family member
• other family members who have an interest in your mental health and care
• court of protection
• Office of the Public Guardian (OPG)
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
• Home Office
• HMRC
• banks and building societies
• credit reference agencies
• Adult Safeguarding Board (ASB
• appropriate adult and children’s social care team(s)
• other South Gloucestershire Council services as appropriate including legal services, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

We have specific data sharing agreements in place with local agencies. Sometimes the law requires that we may have to pass your details on to a third party, for example to prevent crime.

Information will only ever be shared when it is strictly necessary to help us provide effective services. You have the right to refuse to share this data if you so wish.  We will not pass it onto any other parties unless required to do so by law, or in all reasonable circumstances the disclosure is fair and warranted for the purposes of processing or subject to a legal data protection exemption.

How long we will keep your information

We will keep your information for as long as you have a relationship with us. Specific information relating to this service will be retained according to the adult care services record retention schedule. We retain anonymised information about the service we provided to help us improvements in the future.

Your rights

You have a number of rights relating to your information, for example:

• to see what we hold
• to ask us to share it with another party
• ask us to update incorrect or incomplete details
• to object to or restrict processing of it or to make a complaint about how we are handling it

If you have given us your permission to use your information, you also have the right to withdraw that permission at any time in the future.

If you have any worries or questions about how your personal information is handled contact our Data Protection Officer at:

Email: DPO@southglos.gov.uk
Postal address: Data Protection Officer, PO Box 1953, Badminton Road Office, Badminton Road, Bristol, BS37 0DE

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) via their contact page or call them on 0303 123 1113.