SEND5 Consultancy

 

The processing of personal data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the GDPR). This legislation will replace current data privacy law, giving more rights to you as an individual and more obligations to organisations holding your personal data.

 

In compliance with the new regulations, we set out here what data we hold on you and how we use and store it, how long we keep your data for, and why we keep the data that we do.

 

What data do we hold?

We keep information such as name, address, date of birth and contact details. Most of this data will be provided by you on starting a contract with us but we may receive additional information from schools or other professionals, relating to educational and medical assessments as well as school and college records or relevant social care information.

 

This is sensitive and essential information that we need to conduct our service, to inform the assessments and diagnosis for you, your child or student.

In starting a contract with SEND5, you consent to us collecting relevant data from any authority that holds data essential to conduct an assessment or diagnosis on you, your child or your student.

 

How do we collect this data?

Most of the data we collect will be provided directly by our service users, through a direct questionnaire when we begin an assessment or intervention.

We also collect information from any relevant authorities or professionals related to you or your child’s education, medical or social care history.

This data is usually records that a service user will not have copies of, or direct access to, and is essential in providing our service. We will only collect data essential to providing you with our services.

 

Why do we collect this data?

We require this data as background information for assessments, and to produce an accurate diagnosis. During an assessment we also require this information so that clients or students can receive copies of their previous assessments or educational/medical records.

 

How do we store your data?

Physical copies of any information held are kept on site in a locked filing cabinet. Data held on our service users are kept in cloud storage online, with all files and folders password protected and login to the cloud storage protected with 2 factor authentication.

 

To ensure that your sensitive information is kept securely, any files held on laptops or PCs/MACs are also held in password protected folders, with access to the PC or MAC password protected.

 

Files stored on external storage devices (such as USB sticks or external hard drives) will also be password protected, or on an encrypted storage device.

 

Who has access to your data?

Your assessor on the SEND5 team will have access to all your data for the duration of the assessment/session/diagnosis. Other members of the team will not have access to your data unless they are included on your assessment.

 

In some circumstances we are required to share sensitive data with local educational/medical/social care authorities/bodies as they need any updated information which relates to you or your interaction with them (such as providing your school or college with a record of a completed assessment, updating your medical records based on assessments, or updating your local authority with regards to any social care information that is affected by an assessment or diagnosis)

 

In the case of your data needing to be shared with another private entity involved in you, your child or your student’s assessment or diagnosis, we will provide you with a contract to give informed consent for this data being shared at the start of any contract.

 

How long do we hold your data for?

After completing a contract we will delete any data provided to us by you for the purposes of the contract, and any sensitive information provided by other authorities or professionals during our contract (including educational, medical and social care information).

 

Due to PATOSS regulations, we are legally required to keep records of our contract with you and any reports or diagnosis we have produced during our assessment for 6 years or until the service user turns 24.

We are required to keep this data in case it is required for use in legal proceedings.

 

How do we process or transfer your data?

We transfer any digital information via email, with data sent as a password protected file, with a password sent in a following email to ensure security of your data. We also request that any data a service user provides to us is sent in this manner.

 

For physical information, such as reports or diagnosis, this information is either sent via post or delivered in person. Any information sent through the post will be sent registered/certified delivery, and the recipient will be required to destroy any information held based on their legal requirements for holding the data (most educational or medical authorities will be required to keep a permanent record of data relating to your educational or medical history)

 

Access and deletion requests

We can provide a full audit of any data we hold on you, your child or your students on request, and will delete all data we do not have a legal obligation to hold on a user’s request.

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A downloadable version of this privacy notice is available here