Safeguarding Enquiries Service (Adults)

In order to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), where personal data relating to a data subject is collected, Lancashire County Council would like to provide you with the following details.

Identity and contact details of the data controller

Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Contact details of the data protection officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Paul Bond. You can contact him at dpo@lancashire.gov.uk or Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ.

Purposes for processing

There are 7 safeguarding enquiry teams in Lancashire which are based within various locations. They provide a service to adults with care and support needs who are aged 18 year and over. They were alongside other services such as older people and physical disabilities, learning disabilities and autism, mental health service. The 7 teams are a dedicated safeguarding service which undertake section 42 enquiries once a decision has been made by the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) that full safeguarding enquiry is needed.

The teams consist of Social Workers and Social Care Support Officers, Team Managers they undertake full safeguarding enquiries or cause others to do this on their behalf and co-ordinate the responses back following an internal enquiry. The service gathers further information, undertakes strategy meeting as and when required and risk assessment and protection planning meetings and review meetings as appropriate. The staff consider the risks presented and analysis this to make a decision about what the safeguarding plan should be and make recommendations as appropriate to safeguard individuals from further abuse or neglect.

All decisions around the response to a safeguarding concern are made in conjunction with the individuals concerned, or their representative/advocate and with partnership agencies where possible and appropriate.

The safeguarding service will only collect and process/use information for individuals:

To prevent harm or abuse for Adults who by reason of their care and support needs are unable to protect themselves from either actual or potential abuse or harm.
Where appropriate to arrange for the concern/risk to progress along an alternative care pathway – e.g. social care assessment/ carer's assessment / care package increase etc. to minimise the risk of abuse or harm and to promote wellbeing.
To make contact with the alleged victim (or their representative if appropriate) to obtain informed consent to safeguarding enquiries and to discuss their desired outcomes in line with making safeguarding personal. If consent is declined information will be used to consider if there are valid reasons to act e.g. where others are at risk; need to address a service failure that may affect others.
To make an initial view regarding mental capacity and as appropriate refer to the appropriate service such as Advocacy Services for alleged victims, who may lack capacity and may require support to participate in the safeguarding enquiry process and the safeguarding planning arrangements.
To consult with Police partners within the MASH where there is concern that an alleged victim is the subject of crime – to determine if the police should lead the safeguarding enquiry and to determine if a single agency community visit or police and social worker joint enquiry is needed.
To consult with Police partners to obtain police intelligence re the person alleged to have caused harm to determine if there is intelligence which may suggest – risk to alleged victim/risk to others /risks to the environment.
To share information and discuss with key statutory partners to mitigate against such risks.
To work alongside and in partnership with both LCC and other partners such as Children's Social Care (CSC), MASH and the Emergency Duty Team (EDT) out of hour's social work service. Learning disability and autism services, older people and physical disabilities services and mental health. Clinical Commissioning Group, Police, Probation, independent providers such as care homes and domiciliary providers.
To notify the Care Quality Commission (CQC) the regulator (for regulatory purposes) in respect of all safeguarding alerts received in respect of all allegations for individuals in receipt of registered residential or domiciliary care services for consideration of regulation breach.
To notify LCC contracts where there is information and allegations relating to quality concerns and consideration of contractual breach.
To consult with registered service providers to enable them to take timely action to mitigate the immediate risk and or prevent a re-occurrence of the safeguarding incident.
To obtain assurance that advice and medical intervention as required has been obtained.
To work to the categories of abuse as defined in the Care Act 2014 (amended 2016)
To record and maintain information on the spreadsheet which contributes to the Radar and QPIP quality meetings so that the overall quality of registered services in Lancashire can improve and contribute to patient safety.
To follow the Local authority serious incident reporting procedure where criteria is met (currently being drafted April 2018)
Where possible and appropriate make section 42 safeguarding enquiries and reach a conclusion, ensuring that a safeguarding plan is in place. Where an enquiry concludes neglect or an omission of care has occurred within regulated services, make recommendations in respect of actions required to prevent a re-occurrence.
Information will only be shared on a need to know basis in accordance with the information sharing agreement and General Data Protection Requirements.
To monitor, evaluate and plan for service improvements.

Category of personal data being processed

Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)
Special category personal data (racial, ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation)

Legal basis for processing personal data

The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

(e) Public Task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. You must reference the applicable task/function and its' basis in law if you wish to rely on this basis for processing.

Consent is obtained from the vulnerable adult to share information in order to undertake safeguarding enquiries, manage risks, make safe and prevent risk of harm and abuse. If consent cannot be gained then information may still be shared if it meets the safeguarding threshold.

The Care Act 2014 stipulates that safeguarding duties apply to an adult who;

Has care and support needs (whether or not the Local Authority is meeting any of those needs) and
Is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect and
As a result of care and support needs, is unable to protect themselves from either the risk or experience of abuse or neglect

The safeguarding service collects and holds information about people for whom this safeguarding duty applies. This information is only shared between LCC and the board partner agencies on a need to know basis and in response to allegations of abuse, harm or neglect. The information is used to prevent further abuse occurring or to safeguard communities.

Legal basis for processing special categories of personal data

The legal basis for processing your special categories of personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

(a) The data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of this personal data.

(g) Processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services.

The conditions for processing under the Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1 Part 2 (18) Safeguarding of children and individuals at risk.

Recipients of the data

Lancashire Constabulary
Lancashire Fire and Rescue
Lancashire Victim Support
Lancashire Probation Service
The Cumbria and Lancashire Community Rehabilitation Company Limited
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
NHS East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Chorley and South Ribble Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Fylde and Wyre Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Greater Preston Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS West Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Midlands and Lancashire Clinical Support Group
East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust
Care Quality Commission

Information we share

Name
Date of birth
Address
Medical information
Category of need
Details of placements
Safeguarding concerns
Risk assessments
Social services number
NHS number
Assessment information
Carer/family information
Person alleged to have caused harm details
Other agency involvement
Safeguarding report
Outcomes of safeguarding enquiries

Any transfers to another country

Retention periods

Lancashire County Council will only store your information for as long as is legally required or in situations where there is no legal retention period they will follow established best practice.

File Type	Description	Security	Retention Period
Emails	Emails held in Outlook that haven't been exported or moved elsewhere.	Encrypted used when emailing personal data to partners.	1 year from date received and automatically deleted.

Your rights

You have certain rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), these are the right:

To be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
To withdraw your consent. If we are relying on your consent to process your data then you can remove this at any point.
Of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself. To request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing. You are entitled to receive a copy of your personal data within 1 calendar month of our receipt of your subject access request. If your request is complex then we can extend this period by a further two months, if we need to do this we will contact you. You can request a subject access request, either via a letter or an email to Information Governance Team, address below.
Of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
To erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
To restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
To data portability. We can provide you with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form when asked.
To object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.
In relation to automated decision making and profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

If you want to exercise any of these rights then you can do so by contacting:

Information Governance Team Lancashire County Council PO Box 78 County Hall Preston PR1 8XJ

Or email: dpo@lancashire.gov.uk

To ensure that we can deal with your request as efficiently as possible you will need to include your current name and address, proof of identity (a copy of your driving licence, passport or two different utility bills that display your name and address), as much detail as possible regarding your request so that we can identify any information we may hold about you, this may include your previous name and address, date of birth and what council service you were involved with.

Further information

If you would like more information about this specific service then please contact Safeguarding Service on 0300 123 6720.

For more information about how we use personal information see Lancashire County Council's full privacy notice.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact the Information Governance team who will investigate the matter.

Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ or email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).