Who we are and what we do

Children in out-of-home or alternative care face a major problem in having access to life moments, memories, photos and videos, reports, awards, and identity documents. Carers often take a lot of photos of significant moments of the child or young person’s life (e.g. birthday parties, a trip to the zoo, holidays, sporting achievements, family gatherings, or any of the usual family moments). These moments are priceless and form part of the child’s identity and life story. There are also documents such as birth certificates that are critical for the child, and which are often hard to access.

The Council’s Children’s Care and Support service is working with CaringLife, an award-winning platform and app that has been created to solve this problem, giving children and young people digital access to all their life memories and documents in a very private and secure way.  Find out more about CaringLife’s privacy practices on their website.

Council social workers can see and moderate all the content and can also add memories and other important documents.

Information we hold about you

The Council will not hold the data directly. All data is held on the CaringLife app platform, which is hosted on AWS cloud servers.

The following personal data will be uploaded to the platform:

• Name and surname;
• Child or young person’s date of birth;
• Carer’s email address;
• Young person’s email address (children and young people will receive their own access to their accounts, with the ability to upload their own content, when their social worker advises that this would be either age or stage-appropriate for them. The young person’s email address will only be necessary at this point);
• Photos;
• Journal notes; and
• Achievements/milestones.

As a consequence of taking photos of you, we may be processing data relating to your race or ethnic origin, religion, health/disabilities or sexual orientation. The GDPR defines these as special category data.

Why we need your information and how we use it

Data uploaded to CaringLife is for your benefit. You will have access to life moments, memories, photos and videos, reports, awards, and identity documents.

The lawful basis for the processing

6.1(e) Public Task – The processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller 

If at any time a Carer wishes to no longer use the platform, they may contact the Council or CaringLife directly.

Upon turning 18, if a young person wishes to no longer use the platform, they may contact the Council or CaringLife directly.

Who your information will be shared with (if applicable)

Your data will be shared with CaringLife, which is a global service. Therefore, CaringLife processes and stores the information gathered on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud servers located in the UK.

How long we will keep your information

CaringLife will retain your data for as long as the CaringLife Account is active, or as long as needed to provide the service to you.

If the Council terminates the account (for whatever reason), the Personal Information associated with the account will no longer be accessible to the Council. Any Content or Personal Information that Council staff have posted to the CaringLife Account may still be available to you.

There may continue to be residual copies of such Content and Personal Information due to ongoing data back-up, archiving and to comply with our legal obligations.

Our Data Protection Officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Kim Starbuck, you can contact her by email at dpo@lbbd.gov.uk.

To learn more about your individual rights please go to General Privacy Notice.

Complaints and contact details

These are included in the relevant section of the General Privacy Notice.

Information Commissioner’s Office

If we’re unable to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).