Lancashire County Council Fostering Service
In order to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), where personal data relating to a data subject is collected, Lancashire County Council would like to provide you with the following details.
Identity and contact details of the data controller
- Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ
Contact details of the data protection officer
- Our Data Protection Officer is Paul Bond. You can contact him at dpo@lancashire.gov.uk or Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ
Purposes for processing
Lancashire County Council (LCC) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you, your family and support network. When we do so we are regulated under the Data Protection Act (2018) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
The Fostering Agency approves, supports and pays foster carers, and provides them with ongoing support, guidance and training to ensure they are fully skilled to be effective foster carers. The agency works with LCC foster carers and a range of fostering agencies to ensure that children are placed with the most appropriate family.
Category of personal data being processed
- Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)
- Special category personal data (racial, ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation)
Legal basis for processing personal data
The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:
(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.
(b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.
(c) Legal Obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law. You must reference the applicable legislation if you wish to rely on this basis for processing.
(e) Public Task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. You must reference the applicable task/function and its' basis in law if you wish to rely on this basis for processing.
The lawful basis that applies will depend on individual circumstances.
The application of the UK GDPR Article 6 lawful basis above is by virtue of the following legislation:
Adoption and Children Act 2002 and associated regulations
Children and Adoption Act 2006 and associated regulations
Local Authority Social Services Act 1970
Care Standards Act 2000
The Fostering Services Regulations 2011 as amended by The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review and Fostering Services (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2013
The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010
The National Minimum Standards for Fostering Services (England and Wales)
Children and Families Act 2014
The legislation above may be relied upon at different times depending on individual circumstances and the purposes for which we are required to process your personal data.
Legal basis for processing special categories of personal data
The legal basis for processing your special categories of personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:
(a) The data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of this personal data.
(b) Processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.
(h) Processing is necessary for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, such as protecting against serious cross-border threats to health or ensuring high standards of quality and safety of health care and of medicinal products or medical devices.
The application of the UK GDPR Article 9 lawful basis above is by virtue of the following legislation:
Adoption and Children Act 2002 and associated regulations
Children and Adoption Act 2006 and associated regulations
Local Authority Social Services Act 1970
Care Standards Act 2000
The Fostering Services Regulations 2011 as amended by The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review and Fostering Services (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2013
The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010
The National Minimum Standards for Fostering Services (England and Wales)
Children and Families Act 2014
The legislation above may be relied upon at different times depending on individual circumstances and the purposes for which we are required to process your personal data.
Recipients of the data
We may be required to send or receive your personal data from other organisations in order to fulfil our service functions, statutory responsibilities or where we have your permission to do so.
In doing so we will ensure that a clear lawful basis exists for processing your personal data.
We may share your personal data with the following organisations:
- Therapeutic providers who are undertaking support work
- Courts
- Police
- Other local authorities for statutory and non-statutory safeguarding purposes
- Other fostering agencies for statutory check purposes
- Health professionals
- Education establishments
- Employers
- Department for Education
- Ofsted
- Scayt
- Fostering panel
- Minute takers
- Health Agencies and GPs
- Any person undertaking a Statutory Inquiry under section 81 of the Children Act 1989
- CAFCASS Officers
- The Court and officers of the Court
- The Disclosure and Barring Service
- Any person appointed to deal with a complaint or representation in respect of which access to the Fostering Case Record is required in order to carry out the responsibilities of his or her appointment.
- Therapeutic providers who are undertaking support work
- Link Maker
- RAA and relevant social care employees including Adoption Panel members and social workers
- An Independent Review Panel convened to consider a Qualifying Determination of a fostering agency, e.g. where a fostering applicant has exercised his or her right to challenge a decision of the fostering agency as to their suitability to foster or where a decision has been made in relation to the disclosure of protected information
- Any person undertaking a Serious Case Review in relation to a child
- The Secretary of State or persons authorised on his/her behalf, an Ombudsman or regulatory authority
- Relevant social care employees including Fostering Panel members and social workers
Information we share
All information about foster carers, children and services delivered by Lancashire County council. This will include the following personal data and special category personal data:
- Title
- Surname
- Forename
- Preferred Name
- Gender
- DOB
- Address
- Ethnicity
- Contact numbers and email address
- Marital Status
- Relationships
- System ID numbers generated by data controllers
Within assessments, we will also hold a significant amount of additional personal and highly sensitive information such as
- Details of past offences and DBS information
- Employment and education history
- Medical history
- Motivation to foster
- Personal beliefs and views
- Social history
- Parenting capacity
- Personal circumstances.
It is possible that any of this information may be shared with the court, legal representation, CAFCASS officers and or the court if required to do so.
We will only share your personal data where we have a clear lawful basis for doing so and will ensure the security and confidentiality of your personal data at all times.
Any transfers to another country
Your personal data would only be transferred to another country as part of the work of the Lancashire County Council fostering agency in specific circumstances where there is a clear lawful reason to do so.
Retention periods
We keep your information securely in line with the retention periods shown below, after which time it is archived or securely destroyed, unless we are required by legal reasons to retain records for longer than the stated retention period.
| File type | Description | Security | Retention period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prospective Foster carers (not approved) |
Records relating to prospective foster carers who are not approved |
|
Date of last contact with foster carers +3 years |
| Foster parents approved by LCC - including any person with whom a child is placed (under Regulation 34 or 38 of the Fostering |
Records relating to Foster carers |
|
Date of last contact with foster carers +10 years |
| Finance and procurement, financial agency's, payments: all records relating to the payment of foster carers |
Records relating to Foster carers |
|
6 years |
Your rights
You have certain rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), these are the right:
- to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
- to withdraw your consent. If we are relying on your consent to process your data then you can remove this at any point.
- of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself. To request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing. You are entitled to receive a copy of your personal data within 1 calendar month of our receipt of your subject access request. If your request is complex then we can extend this period by a further two months, if we need to do this we will contact you. You can request a subject access request, either via a letter or via an email to Information Governance Team, address below.
- of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
- to erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
- to restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
- to data portability. We can provide you with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form when asked.
- to object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.
- in relation to automated decision making and profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.
If you want to exercise any of these rights then you can do so by contacting:
Information Governance Team
Lancashire County Council
PO Box 78
County Hall
Preston
PR1 8XJ
Email: dpo@lancashire.gov.uk
To ensure that we can deal with your request as efficiently as possible you will need to include your current name and address, proof of identity (a copy of your driving licence, passport or two different utility bills that display your name and address), as much detail as possible regarding your request so that we can identify any information we may hold about you, this may include your previous name and address, date of birth and what council service you were involved with.
Further information
If you would like more information about this specific service then please contact enquiries@lancashire.gov.uk.
For more information about how we use personal information see Lancashire County Council's full privacy notice.
If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact the Information Governance team who will investigate the matter.
Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ or email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk
If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).