Short Breaks: Gateway Cards (Parents)

Why do we collect and use this information?

Hampshire County Council is the Data Controller for the purpose of collecting and using information from parents/carers and short breaks service providers (in delivery of their short breaks contracts) to contribute to the delivery of our statutory duties to provide support services for children in need and their families. The Gateway Card is free and will give you and your child access to activities, play schemes and buddy schemes available through our short breaks programme.

We collect information about your child as well as information about you as their parent/carer. We hold this personal data securely and use it to:

• Register you with the gateway card scheme in order to give you access to a range of short break activities
• help activity providers apply for funding to support your child, such as training, resources and additional staff
• provide one to one support for children with a Gateway card through the Community Buddy Scheme
• plan short breaks so that there is a fair distribution across Hampshire
• monitor our contracted providers and evaluate the services being provided
• ensure that our short breaks activities are reliable and regular to best meet families’ needs
• communicate with you around the delivery of the gateway card service
• engage with you in the design of local short breaks services
• undertake wider County Council statutory duties in support of your child’s education and welfare; and
• ensure compliance with our obligations under the accuracy principle of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (Article (5)(1)(d)), making sure our records about you and your family are up to date.

The following sections provide further detail around the information we process setting out what allows us to do this (lawful basis), who we may share it with, how long we keep it for (the retention period), alongside identifying any rights you may have and who to contact if you think we’re not handling your information in the right way.

The categories of information that we collect, hold and share

The following personal and special category information is processed:

• your child’s personal information (such as name, date of birth, school/college/early years provider, Gateway card number)
• special category information about your child (such as their disability and/or additional needs, gender, ethnicity)
• information about your child’s Disability Living Allowance (such as the rate and type)
• information about your child’s circumstances that would mean involvement with the Short Breaks service is appropriate and outcomes sought from the service’s involvement; and
• your personal information (such as name, address, email, telephone).

The lawful basis on which we use this information

We collect and use the information ensuring that we comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018) requirements for processing through:

• Article 6(1)(e) – the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law;
• Article 9(2) (g) – Necessary for reasons of substantial public interest on the basis of Union or Member State law which is proportionate to the aim pursued and which contains appropriate safeguarding measures; and
• Sch.1, Pt.2, 1 - Substantial public interest conditions, for processing under the Data Protection Act 2018.

These articles under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018) are supported by the following specific legislation:

• the Children Act 1989
• S10 of the Children Act 2004
• the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006; and
• the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010

Under this lawful basis we do not require your consent to process this information but we are required, through this privacy notice, to ensure you are fully informed of why we are collecting this information and what we will do with it.

Please note that no automated decision making (decisions taken without a person involved) occurs for any parts of these activities controlled by the County Council.

The County Council does use profiling as part of the gateway card process in setting eligibility criteria for accessing the gateway card. This is set as children and young people who:

• have a disability or additional needs
• §need support to take part in leisure activities
• are between 0 and 19 years old; and
• live in Hampshire or attend a school in Hampshire (excluding Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight)

Storing and securing data

The original online application and any supporting evidence you provide will entered into our service database to create an electronic record and stored within the County Council’s Document Management System (DMS). The information held within the County Council’s DMS will be kept in line with our retention schedule and then deleted as appropriate. The County Council’s DMS is hosted by the County Council in secure UK based data centres, which are on site.

The County Council takes its data security responsibilities seriously and has policies and procedures in place to ensure the personal data held is:

• prevented from being accidentally or deliberately compromised
• accessed, altered, disclosed or deleted only by those authorised to do so
• accurate and complete in relation to why we are processing it
• continually accessible and usable with daily backups; and
• protected by levels of security ‘appropriate’ to the risks presented by our processing

The County Council also ensures its IT Department is certified to the internationally recognised standard for information security management, ISO27001.

Who do we share information with?

We do not share information with anyone unless there is a lawful basis that allows us to do so.

Your information may be shared with external service providers (such as charities, private companies and voluntary organisations) who will be data processors for this information acting on our instructions for the purpose of delivering a contract to the County Council around the delivery of short breaks activities and the Community Buddy Scheme. This will include the sharing of information provided to them by you when you access this service, in order to allow us to deliver our statutory functions as well as monitor and evaluate the impact of services being provided.

Information may be shared with external providers for the provision of the Community Buddy Scheme where this support is deemed appropriate for your child. The provider will act as a separate data controller for this information.

In grant applications providers are required to provide the child’s gateway card number, particularly if they are applying for support for individuals funding. The grant applications are then shared with members of the evaluation panel, which is made up of representatives from Parent Voice, Hampshire Parent and Carer Network (HPCN), Parent & Carers and internal officers.

Requesting access to your personal data and your rights

Under data protection legislation, individuals have the right to request access to information about them that we hold. To make a request for your personal information, or someone you have responsibility for, please contact the Children’s Services Department’s Subject Access Request (SAR) Team.

You also have the right to:

• prevent processing for the purpose of direct marketing
• object to decisions being taken by solely automated means
• in certain circumstances, have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed
• claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the Data Protection regulations

Please note that under the UK GDPR, there is also a right to erasure but the right to erasure does not provide an absolute ‘right to be forgotten’. Where the data being processed is for the purpose of ‘performing a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law’ (Article 6(1)(e))’, this right does not automatically apply.

Contact details

If you would like more information about these services visit our Gateway Card and Gateway Card+ page.

Further information

The above information is the specific privacy notice for this service. For more information about your rights in relation to your personal data, see the County Council’s general privacy notice.

You have some legal rights in respect of the personal information we collect from you. See our Data Protection page for further details.

You can contact the County Council’s Data Protection Officer by email [email protected].

If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office.