Privacy notice – early years inclusion support

North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data. North Somerset Council Early Years and Childcare Service offer inclusion support to early years providers for children aged 0-5 years prior to school entry.

The Early Years and Childcare Service can be contacted on 01275 888 300.

The service may include Area SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) advice and guidance, including observation of children identified with special educational needs and/or disability (SEND). In addition, the service includes a range of support for early years providers regarding all matters related in inclusive provision.

We will collect information about your child that gives us a complete overview of their special educational needs and/or disabilities and the professionals/agencies involved with assessing and meeting those needs, in order to deliver our service to the early years provider. We will need some information about you in order to contact you.

This information will include a summary from yourselves and the provider about the inclusive support in place for your child. Specific information will be requested in order to monitor how best to support your child and signpost to other services as appropriate.

Forms that parents/carers may need to complete with their child’s early years providers can be found within the Early years inclusion support and early years SEND top-up funding key documents booklet below.

In accordance with Article 6(1)(c) of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we collect personal data in order to meet our statutory duties as outlined in the following legislative documents:

• Early Education and Childcare Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities (Department for Education, June 2018);
• Early Years Entitlements: Local Authority Funding of Providers, Operational Guide 2020 to 2021 (Education and Skills Funding Agency, December 2019);
• Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (Department for Education and Department of Health, January 2015)
• Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government, July 2018)

These sets of legislation also provide us with a lawful basis to process the necessary special categories of personal data, in accordance with Articles 9(2)(g) and 9(2)(h) of GDPR.

The information you provide will be held and used in accordance with the requirements of UK and European data protection law. The information will be used for the administration of the Early Years and Childcare Service’s inclusion support service including meeting statutory duties and allocating additional funding. The information will be held for no longer than 5 years. In the case of a Child Looked After (CLA) by the Local Authority information is retained for 75 years. This information will be stored electronically in North Somerset Council’s secure storage system.

The information provided will be shared with relevant professionals who have demonstrated that they have a lawful and legitimate interest in the information, for the purposes of undertaking their statutory duties under the:

• Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (Department for Education and Department of Health, January 2015)
• Working Together to Safeguard Children, (HM Government, July 2018)
• Children and Families Act 2014
• The Framework for the Inspection of Local Area’s effectiveness in identifying and meeting the needs of children and young people who have SEND [Under Section 20 of the Children Act 2004] (Care Quality Commission and Ofsted, April 2016)

Professionals may include:

• Multi-agency Information and Support in the Early Years (MAISEY) agencies including education, health and social care
• Multi-agency Early Years SEND Top-up Funding panel
• Receiving schools/academies and school admissions service
• Other professionals who support children with SEND within North Somerset
• Springboard Opportunity Group who carry out some Area SENCO services in partnership with North Somerset Council Early Years and Childcare Service
• Springboard Opportunity Group in their capacity as partner through a Service Level Agreement with North Somerset Council
• Relevant professionals in other Local Authorities if a child moves or if a child lives out of North Somerset
• Generic anonymised statistical data will be used to inform the monitoring and self-evaluation of our local SEND services, as required by the Local Joint Area Review process

We may lawfully share your information with relevant professionals without your consent where there is legal basis for us to do so (for example; Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance, 2015), in accordance with Articles 6(1)(c), 9(2)(g) and 9(2)(h) of GDPR.

We may lawfully disclose information to public sector agencies to prevent or detect fraud or other crime, or to support the national fraud initiatives and protect public funds under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. Under the conditions of the Digital Economy Act 2017, we may also share personal data provided to us with other public authorities as defined in the Act, for the purposes of fraud or crime detection or prevention, to recover monies owed to us, to improve public service delivery, or for statistical research. 

We do not share the information with other organisations for commercial purposes, and at no point is your data shared or processed outside of the UK.  We will not use your personal information in a way that may cause you unwarranted nuisance.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of rectification, and restriction (to destruction of records only). You can make this request through the form below.

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we process your personal data, contact our Data Protection Officer at DPO@n-somerset.gov.uk.