Early Help is a collection of agencies working together across Oxfordshire to provide a wide range of support, preventative and advisory services to children and families.

The aim of Early Help is to:

• support vulnerable children, young people and families
• support family life
• enable learning
• prepare for work
• improve community safety
• promote health and wellbeing
• develop healthier places

It is important that we plan, monitor and align our delivery of services to meet the needs of Oxfordshire’s children and families. To do this, we carefully and responsibly use the information we collect. Where personal information is used for statistical purposes we will ensure that details that may identify an individual are removed.

In certain cases, such as safeguarding and criminal investigations we are legally obliged to process personal data and provide information to the police. We have procedures in place to do this in a secure and confidential manner.

How and why we gather your information

Your personal data will be gathered by one of Oxfordshire's Early Help agencies through an Early Help Strengths and Needs Form and the Team Around the Family process. This information is sent to Oxfordshire County Council and stored on the system that retains completed Strengths and Needs Forms and Team Around the Family documentation.

The purpose of collecting and retaining your personal information is to provide you with the Early Help service and fulfil the authority's responsibility under Public Task.

Categories of personal data being processed

• personal data (such as name, NHS number, date of birth, address, and telephone number)
• special category personal data (such as gender, religion, ethnicity, disability, employment status, and some medical information)
• special education needs and disability
• personal information regarding dependent children, ethnicity, gender, school or nursery attended, additional needs including SEND and some medical conditions
• personal information relating to your family's health, finances and lifestyle.

Lawful basis for processing personal data

The lawful basis for processing your personal data in accordance with the data legislation is:

• UK GDPR Article 6(1)(c) Legal Obligation: to comply with the law
• UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e) Public Task: to perform a task in the public interest or official functions
• UK GDPR Article 9(2)(g) Special category data processing for reasons of substantial public interest
• UK GDPR Article 9(2)(h) Special category data processing for the purposes of health or social care
• Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1 Part 2 public interest.

We do so to comply with the following laws and guidance:

• Care Act (2014) pt1
• Childcare Act 2006 s1
• Children Act 2004 s10
• Children and Families Act 2014 pt3
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998 s17, 37, 115
• Digital Economy Act 2017 pt5
• Localism Act 2011 s1
• Working Together to Safeguard Children July 2018

Recipients of the data

• Early Help Partners working with you who have requested this information to provide your family with support and services (for example education establishments, health establishments, voluntary, community and faith sectors)
• Oxfordshire County Council departments that support the legal basis specified above (for example providing education, health support services, local grant applications, funding and safeguarding)
• Strategic Boards and governance functions that oversee the Early Help service, the Strength and Needs approach and the Team around the Family programme
• Government departments including Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), and Department for Education (DfE).

Information we share

• Personal data (such as name, NHS number, date of birth, address, and telephone number)
• special category data (such as gender, religion, ethnicity and disability employment status, pregnancy, special education needs and disability, and some medical information)
• personal information relating to your family's health, finances and lifestyle
• personal information regarding dependent children, ethnicity, gender, school or nursery, additional needs including SEND and some medical conditions
• details of any historical support or interventions or any historical involvement with our partner agencies
• assessment of need and agreed actions to support unmet needs
• details of other agencies working with your family
• details of any risks to professionals to safeguard the workforce.

Retention periods

Oxfordshire County Council will only store your information for as long as is legally required or in situations where there is no legal retention period and will follow established best practice.

Your rights

Under the data legislation (the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018) you have certain data subject rights to:

• be informed via Privacy Notices such as this
• withdraw your consent if we are relying on your consent to process your data
• access the personal information the council holds about you, by making a data subject request to the council, with valid identification and where necessary authority for children or other persons
• rectification, to correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• erasure, to delete your personal data unless there is a legal obligation to process your personal information
• restrict processing, to reduce the information processed about you or prevent certain processing in future
• data portability, to have your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable form when asked
• object, to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes, or any automated decision-making or profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

For more information about your rights and about how the council processes information, please see our corporate privacy notice and access to information.