How the Community and Children’s Services department uses your personal information.
Childrens Services provides different types of care, support and help to children and young people of all ages and backgrounds living in Rhondda Cynon Taf.
To do this, we need to collect and use information about you. We have to tell you how we do that and what we do with it, hopefully this will explain it to you.
If you have any questions about this maybe your, parent/carer or guardian can help you to understand it. If you can’t speak to them, your support worker will also be able to help you.
Or, if there is anything more you would like to know, you can contact us and we will help explain it to you. Our details are at the bottom of this information page.
1. Who are Children’s Services?
We offer advice, help and support to children, young people and their families.
We want to ensure that children and young people are safe, healthy, active and independent.
2. How we help you?
We do a lot of things, like;
- Supporting children
- helping parents with childcare
- Visits from health visitors
- Working with you and your family when you face challenges
- Helping you to deal with issues or problems at home before they get worse
- Offering help and support if you are a young person looking after or caring for someone else
- Supporting you if you are a child or young person with disabilities (physical and learning)
- Giving you access to Youth services, which includes clubs and groups
- Making sure that you are looked after properly, and that nobody is hurting you.
- Supporting you if you are struggling with emotional, psychological and mental health needs
- If you have been adopted or are in foster care, providing you with a safe and supporting environment or help if you want to search for your birth relatives
- Supporting you if you get into trouble with the Police.
3. What is personal information?
This is information about you like your name, date of birth, where you live, what school you go to, your religion, any medical information and information about your family.
4. Where do we get this information?
We will get this information from you when you meet and talk to our social/support workers or if you complete one of our surveys.
If you are very young, you may not know all this information so we will ask another adult/family member who knows you.
We will also ask people that know you, like your Teachers, Doctor, Nurse, Police Officer or anyone else who is helping you.
5. What we will do with your personal information?
We keep your information to remember how we have helped you and helps us to decide how to keep helping you.
6. How do we do this?
We will work out what support you need and create a care and support plan (if needed).
We will make sure you are safe and protected from any harm or abuse and investigate if we think you may be at risk (this could mean that we may have to speak to the Police).
We will answer any questions or deal with any complaints you might have
We have to write reports for organisations that monitor the Council, to make sure we are doing what we are supposed to do.
7. To do all of this, we might have share your information
We might have to share your information with other Council departments or Professionals that can support you and your family if needed.
Some examples of who we might need to share your information with includes the following:
- Other departments in the Council such as housing support teams, Safeguarding teams, Residential Child Care Teams, YEPs, Youth Offending Service
- The Councils Legal team if we have to get advice on a child protection query, or if we are preparing a case for Court
- Your School, College, University, Careers Wales
- Your Doctor, Nurse, the hospital, Counselling services – anyone who maybe helping you if have any medical/health needs
- The Police or other emergency services if we think you could be in danger
It’s just a short list as there are so many people that help us to help you, we could not list them all.
But we only share your personal information if we have a good reason to do so and it will be shared safely and securely.
8. The legal reason we need your information:
The Council has laws that we have to follow to let us use and share your information.
The main one is called;
The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014
All these rules are very strict and we make sure that everyone follows them correctly.
9. How long we will keep your information:
This will depend on the support you need from us, and how long the rules say that we are allowed to keep your information. For example;
- If you and your family have had a little help from us, we may only keep your information for 10 years
- If you have needed more help we would keep your information for 75 years.
- If you have been adopted, we have to keep your information for 100 years (that’s a long time!)
10. What you can do with your information?
The rules allow you to be in charge of your information, these are called ‘your information rights’
It means you can ask to see the information we have on our systems about you.
You can ask us to correct information, if we have made a mistake with it.
Or you can ask us to delete your information.
But we may not be able to give you all the information you have asked for, or change it, this is because the laws might not let us, but we will explain that to you.
For more information about ‘your rights’ please click here
11. Who you can contact to ask questions:
If you have would like to know more about how Children Services uses your information you can contact us;
By email: welisten.complaints@rctcbc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01443 425003
In writing:
Service Improvement and Complaints Team
Ty Elai,
Dinas Isaf East,
Williamstown,
Tonypandy.
CF40 1NY