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Who we are

The Anna Freud Centre, also known as the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, is a registered mental health charity, and is the joint data Controller for the data processing in this research study (SPP). Our funder, What Works in Children’s Social Care is a joint Controller with us.The SPP is a study which aims to evaluate the Lighthouse Parenting Programme (LPP) in Children's Social Care (CSC) Services. The study is a randomised controlled trial, which means that participants will be randomly allocated to either usual care or usual care +LPP, in order to test whether LPP is more effective than usual care alone.

This notice informs you how we may use the personal data we collect from you when you participate in this study.

If you have any questions about the content of this notice you can contact us at:

  • Michelle Sleed:

     

    michelle.sleed@annafreud.org

  • Write to us: Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, 4-8 Rodney Street, London N1 9JH.

Our Data Protection Officer is Susan Henry, DPO@annafreud.org  020 7794 2313OR What Works in Children’s Social Care, The Evidence Quarter, Albany House, London, SW1H 9EA, dpo@theevidencequarter.com

We are working with other partners in the study. Local Authority Children’s Social Care sites have agreed to deliver the Supporting Parents Project, of which one, your Local Authority, will be processing your data. They will maintain responsibility for the usual care and intervention delivery and associated data but will also share data with us for study purposes.  The Social Care sites will share care records with us.We are collecting your personal data to enable us to conduct a research study, which evaluates the LPP against treatment as usual. This will help us to understand what services are helpful for parents in Children’s Social Care.

We collect data about you at the start, to ensure that the study is appropriate for you and once you agree to participate, we collect additional information [for example, questionnaires about how you are feeling as a parent and about how things are going with you and your children] at set points during the study. The information you provide during the study will be used to understand more about whether and how the intervention you receive (usual care + LPP or usual care) is useful to you and could have wider benefit for other families.Our lawful bases for processing this data are specified in the General Data Protection Regulation: we rely upon Article 6(1)(e), we are conducting a task in the public interest, specifically research to evaluate the LPP intervention. As we collect Special Category data we also rely upon Article 9(2)(j) and Schedule 1(Part 1)(4) DPA (2018) and ensure our processing includes suitable and specific measures to safeguard your fundamental rights and interests while we process your data for research purposes.

How we get information

We use information provided by you, when you agree to participate in the study and at set points until the study is completed.We also receive information, via your Local Authority, from your social care record, such as your child social care status, the date of most recent case review, reports of harm to the child in last 6 months, service input (e.g. number of social worker contacts, interventions offered) and any criminal offence data. 

Who we share your data with

We do not use third parties to process the data and we do not share it with third parties for other purposes, including direct marketing.Generally, we will ask your permission before we share your data, but in some circumstances, we are legally obliged to share information, for example under a court order. Where we do share, we satisfy ourselves that we have a lawful basis on which to share the information and document our decision making.

How long we retain your data

Your data will be held securely by the Centre for up to 10 years until the end of the research study, after which it will be anonymised. Then we review it before secure disposal.The anonymised and aggregate data (data that does not identify you individually) may also be used by other researchers at the Anna Freud Centre, including students, for the purposes of continued research. Once the study is closed, the funder and Joint Controller with us, What Works in Children’s Social Care, intends to archive the study data on the ONS Secure Research Service indefinitely. This will be in a pseudonymised format, which means it will be possible for authorised researchers, registered users of the ONS service, to identify you. The purpose of archiving the data is so that further research can be carried out, for example, to look at longer-term outcomes of the support programmes that families received, or to combine with data from other studies. What Works in Children’s Social Care will be the sole Controller of this data from this point.

Your data rights

Under data protection law, you have rights we want to make you aware of. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information and may only apply in certain circumstances. You can check the Information Commissioners website for more detail or contact the DPO.

  • Your right to be informed – this notice informs you what data we collect and how we use it.

  • Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal information.

  • Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to correct information which you think is inaccurate or incomplete. 

  • Your right to erasure - This is known as the ‘right to be forgotten’ and you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances, such as where it is no longer required. 

  • Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to limit the processing of your information in certain circumstances. 

  • Your right to object to processing - You have the right to request we stop processing some or all or your data. 

  • Your right to data portability - This only applies to information you have given us and where we rely upon your consent to process the data but we can provide a copy of your data if desired. 

You are not required to pay a charge for exercising your rights. We generally have one month within which to respond to your request.Please contact us at DPO@annafreud.org if you wish to make a request with regard to any of your rights.

In addition to these data protection rights we also consider your ethical rights. This evaluation has been approved by the UCL Research Ethics Committee [Project ID Number: 9593/002] and as part of that approval process we are required to have your consent for your participation in this evaluation.If you, at any time, want to withdraw from the evaluation we will respect that decision and cease to use your data. You can contact us using the contact details included at the top of this notice to make such a request. The only exception to this is where we have already included your data in our analysis – at this point your data would have been combined with all the other data, and it may not be possible for us to remove yours from the analysis.

Making a complaint

If you feel we may not be handling your data appropriately or if you have any queries or concerns about this you can contact us, dpo@annafreud.orgYou can also, at any time, make a complaint about our processing of your data to the Information Commissioner, https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us

Obligation to provide data and automated decision making

You can choose to participate in the study, in which case we do require your data. We do not use profiling or automated decision making when processing your data for any purpose.

This notice was last updated on 18th May 2021