Privacy policy

Children and Family Health Devon (the Alliance) is made up of multiple NHS providers, that from 1 April 2019 has responsibility for the delivery of community healthcare services to children and families within the county of Devon. A breakdown of the services delivered includes:

Emotional Health and Wellbeing
Mental Health
Children’s Community Nursing
Looked After Children’s Nursing
Integrated Therapies and Neuro-Development
Learning Disabilities Nursing and ASD.

We are an alliance of local NHS organisations led by Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with Devon Partnership Trust.

Each organisation is a Data Controller under Data Protection Legislation and are individually registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

This notice explains what information we collect, why we collect it and how we keep it secure. It also explains your rights and our legal obligation. For more details about how we keep your personal data secure, please read our data protection policies or contact he Data Protection Officer at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust (TSDFT) or Devon Partnership NHS Trust (DPT).

We will notify you of any changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was last updated 1 April 2024. If we use your personal data for any new purposes, updates will be made to the policy information and changes communicated, where necessary in accordance with current data protection legislation. Any queries relating to this privacy note please contact the Data Protection Officer at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust (TSDFT) or Devon Partnership NHS Trust (DPT).

How we will use your personal data

Whenever you use a health or care service offered by the Alliance, important information about you or your child/children is collected to help ensure you/they get the best possible care and treatment.

The information we collect about you may need to be shared with other professionals, so that we can deliver the right services to you. We will only share the minimum amount of personal data to deliver your care, and any sharing which takes place, will comply with data protection legislation. The organisations we may share your personal data with are outlined below, this is not an exhaustive list;

Devon County Council
Children’s Social Services General Practitioners
Primary Healthcare Providers
Clinical Commissioning Groups
NHS organisation
Ambulance services
Education services
Local authorities
Police

Secondary Use

The information collected about you when you use these services can also be provided to other approved organisations, where there is a legal basis, to help with planning services, improving care provided, research into developing new treatments and preventing illness. This is called secondary use, and it helps to provide better care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential personal information about your health and care is only used in this way where allowed by law.

You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used for secondary use. To find out more about the wider use of confidential information and to register your choice to opt out if you do not want your data to be used in this way, visit www.nhs.uk/my-data-choice. If you do choose to opt out you can still consent to your data being used for specific purposes such as research if the opportunity arises

What information do we collect?

We may hold records about you which may include:

Name
Address
Date of birth
Gender
Telephone number(s)
Email address(s)
Next of kin
Emergency contact information
Your ethnicity
Details of any disability you may have
Your religion,
Your registered GP
Clinical information necessary to deliver services to you
Social care information that might be necessary to deliver services to you

Why we collect and use your personal data

The Alliance aims to provide you with the highest quality of health care. To do this we must keep records about you, your health and the care we have provided, or plan to provide to you. Health records are held on paper and electronically, and we have a legal duty to keep these confidential, accurate and secure. This information will be stored in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation.

Your information is never collected for direct marketing purposes and is not sold on to any other third parties. Information will be retained in line with the Information Governance Alliance Retention Schedule and will be stored in accordance with your rights under data protection legislation

The legal basis for us collecting your personal data

Where we are collecting personal data about you for the provision of care, (Article 6 (1) (c, e), there may be some cases where consent may be required, of the General Data Protection Regulation).

If we feel that it is necessary to share your personal data with professionals to ensure you or your child / children are safeguarded from harm, we rely upon the provisions of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and Children Act 1989 & 2004. Where it is necessary to share medical information for these purposes, we rely upon article 9(2)(h) of the General Data Protection Regulation (information necessary for medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems). This is not an exhaustive list of legislations that provide legal basis to disclose information.

We are required to notify officials of infectious diseases which present significant risk to human health and the wider public. Our legal basis for sharing this information is outlined in the Public Health Control of Disease Act 1984 and the Health Protection Notification Regulations 2010.

We may also need to share some personal data about you, so that we can support third party organisations to discharge their regulatory requirements. This includes organisations such as;

The data protection regulator (the Information Commissioner’s Office)
The Care Quality Commission

We may also share information to enable us to comply with court orders and other legal obligations.

Your data protection rights

Under Data Protection Legislation, you have the right to obtain a copy of your personal records held by us; this is called a Subject Access Request (SAR). For details of how to make a request, please visit our website at https://www.torbayandsouthdevon.nhs.uk/about-us/data-protection/

Further details on your rights under data protection legislation and how to exercise them, please visit the ICO website at https://ico.org.uk/

International transfers

Where international transfers are necessary, appropriate security measures will be taken.

Complaints

If you have any comments, queries or complaints about this privacy notice or the processing of your personal data please contact our the Data Protection Officer at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust (TSDFT) or Devon Partnership NHS Trust (DPT).

Alternatively, if you are not happy with the way that the Alliance is handling your personal data, you are entitled to appeal to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). The Information Commissioners Office enforces and oversees the Data Protection Regulations. To find out more about the information rights in the public interest, further details can be found at: www.ico.org.uk