What is personal information? 

Personal information is information that identifies you as an individual and relates to you. This includes your contact details, next of kin and financial information. We may also hold information such as your religion or ethnic group. CCTV, photos and video recordings of you are also personal information. This privacy notice also covers other members of a child’s families who we may process data about from time to time, including, for example, siblings, aunts and uncles and grandparents.

The categories of parent / carer information that we collect, hold and share include: 

1. Personal information (such as name, address, telephone number and email address); b. Information relating to your identity, marital status, employment status, religion, ethnicity, language, medical conditions, nationality, country of birth and free Nursery meal / pupil premium eligibility / entitlement to certain benefits, information about court orders in place affecting parenting arrangements for pupils); 
2. From time to time and in certain circumstances, we might also process personal data about parents / carers, some of which might be sensitive personal data, information about criminal proceedings / convictions or information about child protection / safeguarding. This information is not routinely collected about parents / carers and is only likely to be processed by the nursery in specific circumstances relating to a particular child for example, if a child protection issue arises or if a parent / carer is involved in a criminal matter. Where appropriate, such information may be shared with external agencies such as the child protection team at the Local Authority, the Local Authority Designated Officer and / or the Police. Such information will only be processed to the extent that it is lawful to do so and appropriate measures will be taken to keep the data secure. We collect information about parents / carers before children join the Nursery and update it during children’s time on the roll as and when new information is acquired.

Why do we collect and use parent / carer information? 

We collect and use parent / carer information under the following lawful bases: a. where we have the consent of the parent/carer,  b. where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation c. where processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or another person  d. where it is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority. Where the personal data we collect about parents / carers is sensitive personal data, we will only process it where: a. we have explicit consent; b. processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person where the data subject is physically or legally incapable of giving consent; and / or c. 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, where we 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.

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure.

 

We use the parent / carer data to support our functions of running a Nursery, in particular: 

1. to register a child and decide who can collect the child, 
2. to maintain a waiting list; 
3. to support child learning; 
4. to monitor and report on child progress; 
5. to provide appropriate pastoral care; 
6. to assess the quality of our services; 
7. to comply with the law regarding data sharing;
8. for the protection and welfare of children and others in the nursery including our safeguarding / child protection obligations; 
9. for the safe and orderly running of the nursery;
10. to promote the nursery;
11. to send you communications that may be of interest to you which may include information about events or activities, news, other fundraising activities; 
12. in order to respond to investigations from our regulators or to respond to complaints. In connection with any legal proceedings threatened or commenced against the nursery.

Collecting parent / carer information 

Whilst the majority of information about parents / carers provided to us is mandatory, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. In order to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, we will inform you whether you are required to provide certain parent / carer information to us or if you have a choice in this. Where appropriate, we will ask parents / carers for consent to process personal data where there is no other lawful basis for processing it, for example where we wish to ask your permission to use your information for marketing purposes. Parents / carers may withdraw consent given in these circumstances at any time. 

At Unique Child Nursery CCTV cameras are used around the site for security purposes and for the protection of staff and children. CCTV footage may be referred to during the course of investigations. CCTV footage involving parents / carers will only be processed to the extent that it is lawful to do so. 

 

Storing parent / carer data

A majority of personal data is stored electronically, for example, on our cloud application Famly. 

Some information may also be stored in hard copy format. Data stored electronically may be saved on a cloud-based system. Appropriate steps will be taken to keep the data secure and checks are made around the compliancy of the company that we send it to. We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, insurance or reporting requirements. Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our Data Retention.

 

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. Once you are no longer a parent / carer of a child at the Nursery we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy OR applicable laws and regulations. In exceptional circumstances, we may keep your information for a longer time than usual but we would only do so if we had a good reason and only if we are allowed to do so under data protection law. 

Who do we share parent / carer information with? We routinely share parent / carer information with: 

• Nurserys that pupils attend after leaving us; 
• external agencies that are involved with the family
• we may also share parent / carer information other third parties including the following: 
• Our local authority, Waltham Forest 
• A child’s home local authority (if different to above);
• The Department for Education (DfE); 
• The Police and law enforcement agencies; 
• NHS health professionals including the health visitors, educational psychologists, SLT’S etc 
• Education Welfare Officers; 
• Courts, if ordered to do so; 
• OFSTED  
• Prevent teams in accordance with the Prevent Duty on nurseries; 
• Our legal advisors; 
• Our insurance providers / the Risk Protection Arrangement; Some of the organizations referred to above are joint data controllers. This means we are all responsible to you for how we process your data. In the event that we share personal data about parents / carers with third parties, we will provide the minimum amount of personal data necessary to fulfil the purpose for which we are required to share the data. For example, names and contact details.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE 

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

Our legal grounds for using your information 

This section contains information about the legal basis that we are relying on when handling your information. Legitimate interests: 

This means that the processing is necessary for legitimate interests except where the processing is unfair to you. The Nursery relies on legitimate interests for most of the ways in which it uses your information. Specifically, the Nursery has a legitimate interest in:

 

• Providing childcare services to your child
• Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of your child (and other children) 
• Promoting the objects and interests of the Nursery.
• Facilitating the efficient operation of the Nursery
• Ensuring that all relevant legal obligations of the Nursery are complied with.
• Necessary for a contract:

   

  We will need to use your information in order to perform our obligations under our contract with you. For example, we need your name and contact details so that we can update you on your child’s progress and so that we can contact you if there is a concern. 

  Legal obligation: Where the Nursery needs to use your information in order to comply with a legal obligation, for example to report a concern to Children’s Services. We may also have to disclose your information to third parties such as the courts, the local authority or the police where legally obliged to do so. 

  Vital interests: For example, to prevent someone from being seriously harmed or killed to protect the vital interests of any person where that person cannot give consent, for example, if they are seriously hurt and are unconscious. 

  Public interest: When the Nursery consider that it is acting in the public interest. When providing care, the Nursery must comply with an additional condition where it processes special categories of personal information. These special categories are as follows: personal information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic information, biometric information, health information, and information about sex life or orientation. 

  Substantial public interest: The processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest. 

  Legal claims: The processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims. This allows us to share information with our legal advisors and insurers. 

  Medical purposes: This includes medical treatment and the management of healthcare services.

  Right to withdraw consent

   In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Designated Protection Officer. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Data Protection Officer 

The DPO for Unique Child is the person responsible for managing how we look after personal information, deciding how it is shared and overseeing compliance with this privacy notice.

 Like all other organization’s we need to keep your information safe, up to date, only use it for what we said we would, destroy it when we no longer need it and most importantly – treat the information we get fairly. 

This notice is to explain how we use your personal information

We will stop using your information for marketing purposes if you tell us not to; or you would like us to update the information we hold about you; or you would prefer that certain information is kept confidential. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the director of the nursery.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. You can contact the Information Commissioners Office on 0303 123 1113 or via email https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/ or at the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire. SK9 5AF.

What decisions can you make about your information?

From May 2018 data protection legislation gives you a number of rights regarding your information. Some of these are new rights whilst others build on your existing rights. Your rights are as follows:

• If information is incorrect you can ask us to correct it 
• You can also ask what information we hold about you and be provided with a copy. We will also give you extra information, such as why we use this information about you, where it came from and what types of people, we have sent it to 
• You can ask us to delete the information that we hold about you in certain circumstances. For example, where we no longer need the information.
• You can ask us to send you, or another organization, certain types of information about you in a format that can be read by computer.