The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is committed to ensuring that your personal information is used lawfully and appropriately

The Start for Life and Family Hub programme brings services together to improve access, improve the connections between families, professionals, services, and providers, and put relationships at the heart of family support. There are three Family Hubs across the borough offering support to families from conception and two, and to those with children of all ages, which is 0-19 or up to 25 for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), with a great Start for Life offer at their core.

The Family Hub Early Help Consortium provides early intervention and help to support families with children under five years old. This is done through one of the six voluntary sector commissioned partners: Lifeline, Mind, Sycamore Trust, So he Cares, Carers and Safe Families, these six organisations make up the Family Hub Early Help consortium. They offer tailored one-to-one support to families who need support this can include support with a new baby, knowing where to access services and getting the confidence to access services, it can also include support families to prioritise and resolve tasks. If you need help were here to support you.  

What personal information we will process for these purposes

All the information we collect about you to deliver our services, is provided by you, when completing the form provided by the relevant professional. 

In order for the Council to provide you with the services you need or request, the Council will have to process certain information from you, both personal and special category data. The processing of your information will include the collection, use, sharing (if appropriate), retention and destruction of your information.

Some of the information we will collect about you and your child includes:

• name, address, and contact details
• date of birth
• gender
• certain health details, such as, the due date of you pregnancy (if relevant)
• if you require an interpreter
• some details regarding your personal history and circumstances, which includes your situation e.g. single parent, new to the borough, feeling isolated, and then the support you need, help to know what services are available, confidence building to access services and meet people and it could include your history, known to the borough as have older children who are in school here or that you’ve had a difficult relationship with the father of the child. We will only know the information you tell us at point of referral
• once we get the referral we will check our database and if you’re on there we will access this case history, which could include records of support you needed before, what support you received before and how we helped you. If you meet the remit of this programme we will support you, regardless of your previous dealings with the Council and other services, including whether you were a child in need, a looked after child however if your needs are deemed to need more support then you will be assessed as needing a different level of support and that service be it Targeted Early Help or Social care will be in touch with you

How we will use your personal information

We use your personal information primarily to provide early help support. which includes: 

• advice and guidance, assessments, services and support for your children and your family, to better meet the needs of your children and family, ensuring you obtain  the help that you require as early as possible
• this support will be delivered through one of the six voluntary sector commissioned partners, early help consortium, and with one-to-one support
• the provision of social networks and support, ensuring that families can make connections within their communities (to other residents, local groups, and to services, including family hubs)​
• support with wellbeing, happiness, and emotional health, as making improvements in overall wellbeing is vital if we are to stem the demand for costly ‘crisis-level’ interventions
• support with confidence and self-esteem, to help build resilience, improve the ensure adequate capacity within the initiative, and provide families with the confidence needed to tackle problems for themselves and bounce back from adversities they will inevitability face.​ This is to help families achieve independence and ‘stand on their own two feet’
• improve home environment and meet physical needs. The accommodation has basic minimum amenities and appropriate facilities. Families will know where to go to get support for their home environment
• improve family relationships, supporting parent and carers to develop good relationships with their children. Supporting parent and carers to keep children and vulnerable adults safe from harm
• support positive parenting, allowing parents to prioritise their children’s needs, to increase their time spent doing positive activities with their children and to know strategies and techniques to work with their children. Focusing on ‘how can we help families to help themselves?’​ 
• for monitoring purposes, for example, analysing the impact of the project, however, your data will be anonymised for these purposes, which means that no one will be able to identify you from that data

This service will support the Family Hubs in Barking and Dagenham with: 

• integration: this service is realising the potential of better integrated services by working as a collective to support family’s needs across the borough. Providers are aware of the Family Hub offer and promoting and signposting the families they work with to wider services 
• sustainability: embedded within the system and achieving outcomes with other partners, building community capacity to support their peers​ 

We may also process this information in other ways compatible with the above, under our function as a local authority. This will mainly include supporting the work of other public bodies providing services to children. We provide more details of the services on our website at Family Hub Early Help Consortium. You do not have to provide all of the information requested by us for some of these services, however, if you do not provide all of the necessary information, we may not be able to provide all of our services to you or your child in full. 

Lawful basis for processing your personal information

We require a lawful reason to process your information. As such, the Council is relying on the following lawful basis: 

• article 6(1)(e), where processing is carried out for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller
• article 9(1)(g), where processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, on the basis of Union or Member State law which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject.

The tasks we carry out, as a local authority, are in exercise of the powers vested in the following pieces of legislation:

• Children Act 1989.

Where appropriate, we may also seek specific consent to use your information, where the use of the data is not necessary for the above purposes but may be very useful or helpful to us to provide services. For example, where we wish to obtain feedback about the services you have received, and any other associated marketing activities, including using photographs/videos, for publicity purposes. Please note, will only do so where we have your explicit consent. 

Where will we store your information?

The data we process for these purposes is stored in the UK. Should data be transferred outside the UK, the Council will ensure that it has the appropriate safeguards in place. 

The Council has appropriate security and controls in place to prevent data loss, for example, hacking attempts, however, we cannot guarantee that the personal information you submit will not be intercepted.

Sharing your personal information

The Council will share your information as appropriate, with the following, but not limited to, organisations:

• Safer Families.
• Sycamore Trust.
• Mind Havering, Barking and Dagenham.
• So He Cares.
• Carers Centre SA.
• Lifeline projects.
• Other Council services as appropriate

In certain circumstances, the Council may share your information with third parties, for example, where we are legally required to do so, e.g. for the prevention/detection of crime/fraud, or where we are concerned about yours, or someone else’s, wellbeing.

Keeping your personal information

Your data will be processed until the child is 25 years old. The data will be kept for the following purposes:

Your Individual Rights

To learn more about your Individual Rights, or how to raise a concern, please go to our General Privacy Notice page.