Privacy notice

Suffolk County Council has a wide range of responsibilities in respect of Children and Young People (CYP). We work with third parties, including, but not limited to, education providers, the NHS and the voluntary sector. We also hold information on children and their families to whom we provide a service in order to help us support you and your family. 

The legal basis for holding and processing this information is that it relates to a statutory (legal) function or “public task”. Where that is not the case, we will probably need to ask you for your consent to process your personal information. 

The categories of information we collect, process, hold and share include:

1. Early Years and Childcare

(a) Leading, managing and developing Early Years and Childcare Services

(b) Planning, reviewing and organising early years places, childcare places and school places

(c) Administration and payment of early education funding to all approved childcare providers

2. Education

(a) Provision of education within schools

(b) services to schools to promote high standards, including training, advice, monitoring and support

(c) Provision of educational support services

(d) Provision of education for Children in Care (LACESS)

(e) Providing information to schools re Performance Licences

(f) Admission to school and home to school transport

(g) Young people missing education

(h) Free school meals

(i)  Provision of the “County Music Groups” programme, including both national and international tours.

3. Post 16 Education

Provision of career and post-16 services

4. Management Information

(a) Planning and performance of Children’s Services

(b) Managing fully integrated information systems supporting Children’s Services

(c) Collection, processing and administering statutory data including census returns and end of key stage assessments

(d) Overseeing services provided by Children’s Services including SENDIASS and Safeguarding

(e) Working with other organisations to support the health and wellbeing of children and young people, including the commissioning of services to enable us to do this.

5. Social Care Services to families

(a) Social Care Services for vulnerable children and young people, including safeguarding and fostering and adoption services

(b) Specialist services for children and families who may be vulnerable or have higher levels of need including Special Education Needs or young people who have offended or are at risk of offending or being involved in anti-social behaviour

(c) Locality Teams providing joined up response services to children and families within their geographical area

(d) Young people who are missing from home

6. Enhanced and Preventative Services, including:

• Universal and Early Help
• Community Nursing
• Family Support
• Attendance
• Support for young people at risk or not in education employment or training

To enable Children’s Services to provide you with the relevant service, it is necessary for us to collect information about you and your family.

The types of information we may collect include:

(a) Name, date of birth, address and contact details

(b) Identifiers such as National Insurance Number and NHS Number

(c) Ethnic group, home circumstances, language and health information

(d) National curriculum assessment results

(e) School attendance/exclusion information

(f) Details of any special educational needs for young people

(g) Relevant medical information for young people/parents/carers – only where appropriate – e.g. special educational need or disability

(h) Physical or mental health

(i) Any additional personal information that is necessary to enable us to provide you with the correct service. In some circumstances this may require us to hold information on adults within the family. We may in some circumstances also check what previous services have been offered to you and your family.

Why we collect and use this information

We collect and use information about young people and families who receive a service from us to ensure we carry out specific functions for which we are responsible to enable us to:

• Provide appropriate support and care to young people and families
• Collate statistics which inform decisions such as funding/provision of services, admissions/exclusions to/from schools
• Assess performance and set targets to maintained schools
• Audit how well our services are meeting the needs of young people and families
• Assess level of financial support required, e.g. free school meals, early years’ funding
• Promote welfare, safeguarding, health and wellbeing for young people
• Assess how well Children’s Services is performing
• Assess/improve finance and individual service planning
• Ethnicity and disability monitoring
• To provide bespoke musical services e.g. national or international Music tours