Privacy notice

This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, how we use and may share information about you. We are required to give you this information under data protection law.

Who we are

Kent County Council (KCC) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

The Fostering Service, working in collaboration with the 18+ Care Leavers Service, approves, supports and pays foster carers and Kent Supported Homes hosts (supported lodgings providers), and provides them with ongoing support, guidance and training to ensure they are fully skilled to be effective foster carers and hosts. The service also works with KCC Foster Carers and KCC Supported Homes hosts, as well as a range of fostering agencies to ensure that children and young adult care leavers are placed with the most appropriate families, carers and hosts.

The personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of approving and supervising foster carers we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

• personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, gender, language)
• special category characteristics (such as ethnicity, disability, religion and medical information)
• family network and relationship information
• employment information
• financial information
• information relating to assessments and approvals for suitability to foster children
• previous or current involvement with KCC Integrated Children’s Services, including Social Care and Early Help
• information related to previous convictions of prospective foster carers.

We also obtain personal information from the following other sources as follows:

• the local authority in whose area you live
• teams within Kent County Council working to improve outcomes for children and young people
• NSPCC
• Disclosure and Barring Service for DBS checks including criminal offence information
• social media
• references (from past and present employer, and personal)
• previous partners
• health providers, such as GPs
• schools
• Kent Police.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

• process foster carer and Kent Supported Homes host applications
• assess suitability to become a foster carer or host
• monitor the progress and stability of placements, to safeguard and support children and young adult care leavers
• provide ongoing support, advice and training to foster carers and hosts
• prevent or detect crime or fraud
• assess and evaluate our services
• inform future service planning and the commissioning of services
• ensure that foster carers and hosts receive the correct payments
• register approved foster carers and temporarily approved connected foster carers with “Foster Talk” - an organisation which offers independent support and advice to foster carers
• provide relevant evidence in legal proceedings relating to Special Guardianship Orders and Care Orders.

We may also use your personal information to send you email updates and promotional material related to foster care within Kent, if you consent to receive these updates.

How long your personal data will be kept

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.

If you opt in to receive email updates and promotional material, we will keep your personal information securely for the duration of the time you wish to receive this promotional material. You can opt out at any time at which point your information will be removed and no longer held. At such a time that we no longer send email updates and promotional material, information held for this purpose will be securely destroyed.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations under The Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 and S20 of the Children Act 1989 to fulfil our statutory safeguarding responsibilities, and to carry out tasks in the public interest. We rely on the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

• Article (6)(1)(c) - Legal obligation: the processing is necessary to comply with the law.

• Article (6)(1)(e) - Public task: the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or for official functions (task or function has a clear basis in law).

We may collect and use your personal information if you opt in to receive email updates promotional material to carry out tasks under consent. For this, we rely on the following legal bases under the UK GDPR:

• Article (6)(1)(a) - Consent: the individual has given clear consent to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

When we collect or share special category personal data, we rely upon the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

• Article 9(2)(b) - Employment, social security and social protection. We rely on the ‘Employment, social security and social protection’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(b) to process your special category data.
• Article 9(2)(f) - Legal claims or judicial acts.
• Article 9(2)(g) - Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(g) to process your special category data.
• Article 9(2)(h) - Health or social care. We rely on the ‘health or social care purposes’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(h) to process your special category data.

Who we share your personal information with

• KCC teams including Finance and children’s services.
• Ofsted (in the event of a local authority inspection of children’s services).
• Other local authorities.
• Fostering agencies - Regulation 26(1A) gives the fostering service undertaking the current assessment the power to request access to records about the applicant held by the fostering service or adoption agency which granted the approval (provided that the applicant consents).
• Foster Talk – an organisation that provides independent support and advice to approved foster carers and temporarily approved connected foster carers.
• Bracknell Forest Local Authority as the lead authority for the ‘LA Fostering South East’ Department of Education funded project to increase the numbers of foster carers recruited across 19 Local Authorities, of which Kent is one, in the South East region.
• E-shot, a platform hosted by Forfront, which manage our email marketing services and database register for those signed up to receive promotional material and email updates
• Courts, in the event of legal proceedings relating to Special Guardianship Orders and Care Order.

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

Your Rights

Under UK GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

• know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
• ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
• ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
• object to direct marketing
• make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
• withdraw consent at any time (if applicable).

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

• ask us to delete information we hold about you
• have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
• object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
• object to how we are using your information
• stop us using your information in certain ways.

We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note, your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under UK GDPR.

If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Who to Contact

Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk, or write to: Data Protection Officer, Sessions House, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XQ.

UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with Information Commissioner, who may be contacted via the Information Commissioner's website or call 03031 231113.

For further information read Kent County Council's main privacy statement.