Milton Keynes Council discharges many of its responsibilities to support children and young people (CYP) in Milton Keynes through its Children’s and Safeguarding & Quality Service. The service comprises the following teams:

• Early Help – including Children’s Centres and provision of family support services and career and post-16 services and Educational Welfare services.
• Safeguarding & Quality – including services for children in need of help or protection, those looked after by the Local Authority and those who have left Local Authority care.
• Youth Offending service
• SEND Services – including Sensory Services, Statutory Assessment Team, Educational Psychologists and Specialist Teachers, Services for 14-25s with Additional Needs and social care for disabled children.

Our responsibilities as a Local Authority in regard to children and young people living in Milton Keynes are described in The Children Act 1989, The Children and Families Act 2014 (or/and Children and Social Work Act 2017)  and other pieces of legislation summarised in statutory guidance “Working Together to Safeguard Children” and the “SEND Code of Practice 0-25”.

We are required to:

• Work with other organisations to support the health and wellbeing of CYP. In Milton Keynes we take a whole family approach to working with CYP to do this.
• Collect, process and administer statutory data including census returns, and end of key stage assessments for children attending Milton Keynes schools, or for whom the Local Authority is responsible.
• Plan, monitor and maintain the quality of services for children and young people.

In order to carry out these tasks in the public interest we collect and process information about CYP and their family members as described below. We have a legal duty to collect and process information where this is necessary to prevent harm to a child.

What information do we hold?

We collect and process personal information about all children who attend school in Milton Keynes which includes names, addresses, dates of birth, ethnicities and nationalities, Unique Pupil Identifier, education provision, details of any Special Educational needs or disabilities (SEND), attendance and exclusion information, education attainment data, information about carers (including names, addresses and contact details) and information as to whether children are eligible for Free School Meals.

We are required to pass on some of this information to the Department for Education (DfE) and any partner agencies with whom the DfE may work in our statutory data returns. The DfE uses this to help with policy formation, performance management and funding, examination data and analysis and to assist with the development of good practice.

When you request or engage with support from us we also record information about:

• Family circumstances and relationships.
• Identified difficulties or relevant health needs (such as whether a parent smokes)
• Details of plans for support and the people involved in these.
• Records of discussions with or visits made to families and information about their contact with us, such as attendances at groups or courses.
• Records of discussions about you that we have with other people as part of your support.
• Children’s NHS numbers (If you are receiving support from Children Social Care then the NHS may share your NHS number with Children Social Care. By using the same number the NHS and Children Social Care can work together more closely to improve your care and support. We will use this number in an integrated care record system across a number of support services including GP’s, hospitals, community matrons, district nurses and social care practitioners. If you wish to opt-out from the use of your NHS Number for social care purposes, please talk with your social worker)

This information is gathered from CYP, their family members and other professionals who know them. We need this information in order to provide you with services. Your signature on or participation in an assessment of need, or support plan such as an Early Help Assessment, indicates to us that you want to receive services from us.

When you are receiving support from us we will share information with other agencies where this will enable us to provide you with the best support possible. You should be made aware of who we are sharing information with and we will discuss and follow your preferences about this as much as we can. Depending on circumstances the agencies we might share information about you with are:

• Education Providers
• Health Agencies (Our statutory functions include responsibility for public health and may require the sharing of relevant information with bodies such as the NHS and voluntary organisations to support the health, wellbeing and care needs of children and young people.)
• Voluntary Service Providers
• Probation services
• Youth Offending Service

Similarly to all Local Authorities we participate in a national programme to demonstrate the impact of whole family support and to claim and receive funds for our services from the Government. When children are referred to us for support we ask our local partner organisations to help us identify whether their family might qualify for inclusion in our Strengthening Families programme.  To do this we share personal information with:

• DWP and local JCP for them to confirm whether an adult is receiving out of work benefits. To do this we keep a record of relevant National Insurance Numbers
• With housing providers for them to confirm whether a family has stable housing.
• With the Police to identify whether anyone in the family has been involved in crime or anti-social behaviour and in particular whether there has been any call out to the family home for domestic violence or abuse.

We will include any families who qualify in the programme cohort, but inclusion will not affect the type of support you get.

We share information we hold about families who are included in our Strengthening Families programme with the Department for Communities and Local Government. This is for the purposes of a national evaluation with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Sharing of personal data and information for the National Impact Study is for evaluation and research purposes only.

We continue to record information about families throughout their support so that we can evaluate the impact of our services locally and plan and fund future services with our partners.

The people who have access to your information use it only as they need to in order to do their jobs and with strict regard to your privacy.

We will not give information about you to anyone outside the Council without your consent unless required to do so by law in delivering our statutory functions, or such actions are necessary for safeguarding children or to deliver the services which you have requested. We have a legal duty to collect and process information and share information with our partners where this is necessary to prevent harm to a child or to prevent a crime but we will involve you in decisions about who we share information with and will follow your preferences about this wherever possible throughout your contact with us.

Whenever we use information, we always limit this to only the details that are needed and we ensure that it is used safely and securely. We require anyone we share information with, or who uses it on our behalf, to do so too. All our staff receive training on data protection and information security.

All of the personal information we hold is kept securely on our Council servers. There is also no automatic decision-taking when your personal information is processed.

Different services retain information about the people they support, for different lengths of time but we keep information for only as long as it is needed. This will be based on either a legal requirement (where a law says we have to keep information for a specific period of time) or accepted business practice. Social care records are usually kept for at least 25 years. More detail can be found in the Council’s Records Retention Schedule.

You can see the records we have about you at any time by clicking here.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of how your information has been collected and/or used, you can make a complaint to the Data protection officer. 

Email: data.protection@milton-keynes.gov.uk

Tel: No: 01908 254900

Post: Data Protection, Milton Keynes Council, Civic Offices, 1 Saxon gate East, Central Milton Keynes, MK9 3EJ