Privacy statement

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and was last updated on 7^th April 2025.

Kent Safeguarding Children Multi-agency Partnership (KSCMP) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

The KSCMP Business Team is hosted by Kent County Council and as such operates in-line with Kent County Council’s guidelines and procedures as appropriate.

Who we are

The KSCMP was launched in September 2019, replacing the previous Kent Safeguarding Children Board. The KSCMP is a statutory mechanism with the purpose of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people across the Local Authority Area.  It is made up of three key Safeguarding Partners. These are: Kent County Council, Kent Police, and NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board. The KSCMP also consists of a range of Relevant Agencies. More information about our partnership arrangements can be found here.

The KSCMP supports and enables local organisations and agencies to work together in a system where:

• children are safeguarded and their welfare promoted,
• partner organisations and agencies collaborate, share, and co-own the vision for how to achieve improved outcomes for vulnerable children,
• organisations and agencies challenge appropriately and hold one another to account effectively,
• there is early identification and analysis of new safeguarding issues and emerging threats,
• learning is promoted and embedded in a way that local services can become more reflective and implement changes to practice, and
• information is shared effectively to facilitate more accurate and timely decision making for children and families.

The Kent Safeguarding Children Multi-agency Partnership Business Team collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

The personal information we collect and use

We carry out work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in Kent. This work includes:

• conducting Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews when a child dies or is seriously harmed and abuse and/or neglect is suspected,
• providing multi-agency training and resources relating to the safeguarding of children,
• evaluating and quality assuring the efficacy of multi-agency safeguarding provisions,
• communicating to professionals and the public, and
• multi-agency audit work.

In order to deliver this work, we sometimes need to collect personal information. The sections below explain how we use your information in each of the areas.

Information collected by us

Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews and other quality assurance:

Part 3 of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018 and Working Together 2023 statutory guidance requires local safeguarding partners to undertake reviews of cases in specific circumstances where there is potential for identifying improvements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. These specific circumstances include where a child has died or been seriously harmed, and abuse or neglect is known or suspected.

For these reasons we collect the following information:

Child/Children -

• Personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, age, gender/sex, date of death (if applicable), date of critical incident, NHS number).
• Special category characteristics (such as ethnicity/race, disability, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership information, religion or belief or non-belief, characteristics of the case which may include mental health status, and drug and alcohol use or wider health information, which may include gender reassignment information).
• Other information about the child/children including:
  • social care information; e.g. whether they are subject to a Child Protection Plan and in receipt of other services),
  • whereabouts at time of critical incident,
  • carer/s at time of critical incident,
  • other agencies involved with the child or family as relevant and appropriate e.g., NHS information, Police and Probation Services.
  • education establishment, if applicable.

Family/other adults that are connected with the review/incident -

• Personal information (such as name/s, date of birth/s, address/es, age, gender/sex, NHS number).
• Special category characteristics (such as ethnicity/race, disability, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership information, religion or belief or non-belief, characteristics of the case which may include mental health status, and drug and alcohol use or wider health information which may include gender reassignment information).
• Other information about the family/other adults including:
  • social care information; whether they are/were subject to a Child Protection Plan and in receipt of other services),
  • other agencies involved with the child or family as relevant and appropriate e.g., NHS information, Police and Probation Services.
• Legal status and/or current criminal proceedings.

We will also request chronologies of the child's life from partner agencies, if necessary. We will also request from agencies where necessary, chronologies of their involvement with the child/children, family and other adults connected with the review/incident during key practice episodes.

We will share this information with:

• all our partner agencies (KCC, Kent Police, NHS Kent and Medway ICB) and other relevant agencies where relevant including wider health providers  to check for their involvement with the family,
• other identified local safeguarding children partnerships and their partners/relevant agencies to check for involvement,
• the Rapid Review Group to consider the case for review,
• lead reviewers for the case when appointed to undertake the review,
• the panel for the case, and
• practitioners who have/had involvement with the family and have agreed to contribute to the review (confidentiality is stressed).

It is a statutory requirement to publish the learning and recommendations from Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews for a minimum of 1 year. Reports are anonymised to protect the identity of individuals related to the review. There are rare exceptions where families may request specifically to be named, e.g., if the publication or an associated campaign is ‘in memory of.’

Other quality assurance processes we undertake may involve the collection of additional personal information, special category data, and data on linked individuals (familial and extra-familial) from a range of multi-agency partners. This data is collected and analysed to ensure the safeguarding and welfare arrangements for children and young people are effective, to evaluate integrated working, and quality assure services provided in Kent, identifying gaps and supporting policy.

Learning and development

KSCMP offers a range of learning and development opportunities and uses a Learner Management System (MeLearning).  Anyone wishing to access KSCMP courses needs to enroll through the Learning Management System. A separate privacy notice for MeLearning is provided at point of registration and can be found here.  At sign up users are made aware of this privacy notice.

For KSCMP events and one off seminars we use MS Teams bookings.

For the purpose of learning and development opportunities we ask you for the following information when you book a course/training event:

• Personal information -
  • Name.
  • Job role, organisation, and sector.
  • Contact details (ie. Email address, telephone number, and address).
• Other information -
  • Budget codes and/or purchase order number (if applicable).
  • Dietary or other requirements (face-to-face courses only).

Communications

If you sign up to receive communications from us (newsletters, updates, campaigns and event details) we collect the following:

• Personal information -
  • Name.
  • Organisation.
  • Email address.

This information will not be shared outside of the organisation. Your details will be stored until you request to no longer receive communications, in which case they will be deleted from the system.

Surveys

From time-to-time we conduct surveys to gather feedback.  Surveys are usually anonymous and will explain the purpose for carrying out the survey and how we will use the information. Surveys are optional. Aggregated information will be shared with KSCMP partners and subgroups, including quotes from free-text boxes, where appropriate. It may also be included or referenced in the KSCMP annual report.   Information will only be used for the purpose which the survey was developed. Information will be stored securely.

How we use your personal information

We use personal information to:

• undertake Rapid Reviews, Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews and other quality assurance which is part of our statutory duty.
• register you for our training and learning and development events.
• inform you about forthcoming events and information about safeguarding through our newsletters and other communications.
• analyse effectiveness of the wider safeguarding system.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to carry out tasks to comply with our legal obligations, to carry out tasks in the public interest and in certain circumstances, with your consent. 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 (not including contractual obligations).
• 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).
• 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)(f) - Legal claims or judicial acts.
• Article 9(2)(g) - Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk’, and ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purposes 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.
• Article 9(2)(j) - Archiving, research and statistics.

These legal bases are underpinned by acts of legislation that dictate what actions can and should be taken by Children Safeguarding Partnerships, including:

• Working Together 2023.
• Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018.
• The Children Act 1989.
• The Children Act 2004.
• The Children and Social Work Act 2017.

We take the following appropriate safeguards in respect of your special category and/or criminal convictions data when relying on the conditions above:

• we have a KSCMP Information Governance Appropriate Policy Document which outlines our data protection principles around personal and special category data.
• we have a Retention Schedule which explains how long data is retained.

We have a statutory basis for collecting personal data and special category data in line with Part 3 of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018 and Working Together 2023 statutory guidance. This requires local safeguarding partners to undertake reviews of cases in specific circumstances where there is potential for identifying improvements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.  As we have a statutory basis for collecting this information we do not need to ask for your permission to collect and share it, however, we will only ever share your data on a basis of need, in line with legislation.

Who we share your personal information with

Information with whom we share information in relation to specific activities including Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, is set out above in the relevant place. The following applies to all areas covered by this privacy notice.

Kent Safeguarding Children Multi-agency Partnership is a signatory to the Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement (the KMISA).

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

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have a number of rights which you can access 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.
• ask us to correct any factual mistakes in the information we hold about you.
• object to direct marketing.
• make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
• withdraw consent at any time (if applicable).

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

• object to how we are using your information.
• 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.
• 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 Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation.

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

Right to withdraw your consent

Where we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you can withdraw your consent to our use of your data at any time.

You can do this by emailing kscmp@kent.gov.uk if it relates to communication/newsletter sign ups or relating to learning and development / training sign up.  For other matters you can do this by emailing 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.

The United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/or telephone 0303 123 1113.

For further information visit https://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council/about-the-website/privacy-statement