Privacy Notice and Data Protection

Adult Social Care

What type of information is collected about you?

• contact details; including name, address, email address, telephone number
• date of birth
• national identifiers such as; NHS number and NI numbers
• information about your family and people who care for you, 
• information about people who you care for
• Information about people who might legally represent you (for example, a Lasting Power of Attorney or Deputy appointed by the Court of Protection)
• IP address and information regarding what pages are accessed and when
• lifestyle, social and personal circumstances
• the services you receive
• financial details for purposes of receiving or making payments and calculating how much you might have to pay towards some services we provide or organise for you
• employment details 
• housing information relating to the type of property you live in, whether you own or rent it, and whether it is suitable for your needs. 
• visual images, personal appearance and behaviour

We may also collect sensitive personal data that may include:

• physical or mental health details
• details about help you might need looking after yourself or your house
• racial or ethnic origin
• gender and sexual orientation
• Languages you speak and how you prefer to communicate
• offences (including alleged offences)
• religious or other beliefs of a similar nature
• criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences
• sections of the Mental Health Acts that may have applied to you

We need your information for the following services and functions:

Your information will be used for the  functions of the Adult Social Care Department . The services we provide are:

• Social Care Information, Advice and Support
• Social Care Assessments 
• Mental Health Act Assessments
• Carers Assessments
• Occupational Therapy and Disabled Facilities Grants Assessments
• Safeguarding Adults Services
• Care services delivered directly by the Council
• Management of care services provided by other organisations and businesses providing care
• Occupational Therapy Equipment
• Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards Assessments
• Provision of Blue Badges
• Delivering our Technology Enabled Care (TEC)

Who your information may be shared with:

We may share some of your information, for example your name and address, internally with other departments in the Council if this:

• helps you to access services more easily
• promotes the more efficient and cost effective delivery of services
• helps recover monies owed to the council

We are required by law to participate in any National Fraud Initiative (NFI) data matching exercises. Adult Social Care  information may be provided to the Audit Commission for NFI purposes and will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for fraud prevention and detection.

We may also share some information with other staff or businesses who do not work for us but are involved in providing support to you. This may include, for example, your GP, an assessor for deprivation of liberty safeguards, care homes or other care providers. 

We work very closely with a number of organisations and ask them to provide some services for us. We will share your information with those organisations so that they can work effectively. These organisations are Kingston Carers Network (who carry out some carers assessments on our behalf); Access Independent (who carry out some occupational therapy assessments) and Yourhealthcare CIC (who provide services to maximise people’s independence).

We also work closely with Achieving for Children (the provider of statutory services for children in Kingston), either to provide support to people with young families, or where young people with social care needs may need support after their 18th birthday. We will pass information to Achieving for Children so that they can work effectively.

Where there are urgent issues of safety, we may pass information onto other statutory agencies, such as the NHS, police or fire service.

We may share your information with our Strategic partner PA Consulting (Argenti) in delivering our Technology Enabled Care (TEC) service. The Council's TEC programme works at improving the quality of life of our residents and promoting independence through the utilisation of technology.

Your data will be shared with external third parties where necessary to delivery care services and support in relation to the Digital switchover

The Kingston Care Record

We are working ever more closely with other health professionals and care agencies in Kingston. This is because Kingston Council and Kingston Health and Wellbeing Board believe it will have many benefits for local people in managing their health and social care needs in a joined-up, efficient way. To help with this, we and local NHS agencies have created a shared database called the Kingston Care Record. 

The Kingston Care Record contains a summary of your health and social care information from your GP, Community health services, Mental health services, Kingston Hospital and Kingston Council’s Adult Social Care Services. 

By sharing information in this way, your doctor, nurse or social worker will be able to offer you the best care and support quickly and safely, especially in an emergency situation. You won’t be asked the same questions over and over again or have to keep repeating your medical or social care history. Doctors, nurses and social workers will be able to work better together and make the best decisions with you through access to the right information when they need it.

To make sure we link your social care records with your NHS records in the Kingston Care Record, we use your NHS Number because this number is unique to you.

Find information about the Kingston Care Record and also how to opt out. If you do opt out, your information may still be shared with your GP, Community health services, Mental health services, Kingston Hospital, but by telephone, secure fax, secure email or letter rather than automatically through the Kingston Care Record.

The Kingston Care Record is being replaced during 2019 by a new system called Connecting Your Care.

Connecting Your Care

We are working ever more closely with other health professionals and care agencies in London. This is because Kingston Council and Kingston Health and Wellbeing Board believe it will have many benefits for local people in managing their health and social care needs in a joined-up, efficient way. To help with this, we and local NHS agencies across the South-west London Care Partnership have created a shared ict system called Connecting Your Care. 

Connecting Your Care contains a summary of your health and social care information from your GP, Community health services, Mental health services, Kingston Hospital and Kingston Council’s Adult Social Care Services. 

By sharing information in this way, your doctor, nurse or social worker will be able to offer you the best care and support quickly and safely, especially in an emergency situation. You won’t be asked the same questions over and over again or have to keep repeating your medical or social care history. Doctors, nurses and social workers will be able to work better together and make the best decisions with you through access to the right information when they need it.

To make sure we link your social care records with your NHS records in the Connecting Your Care, we use your NHS Number because this number is unique to you.

Find out more about Connecting Your Care. You can also find information there about how to opt out of Connecting Your Care. If you do opt out, your information may still be shared with your GP, Community health services, Mental health services, Kingston Hospital, but by telephone, secure fax, secure email or letter rather than automatically through the Connecting Your Care.

Connecting Your Care has its own privacy notice, which also forms part of this notice in the box below as follows:

Connecting your Care - Privacy Notice – Direct Care

Plain English explanation

This privacy notice explains why health and care providers collect information about you and how that information may be used. For additional information about our ‘Connecting Your Care’ programme please also see ‘Connecting Your Care’ leaflet and Frequently Asked Questions or visit the South West London Health and Care Partnership website.

The health and care professionals who look after you maintain health and care records that contain details of any treatment or care you have received previously or are receiving. These records help to provide you with the best possible care.

NHS patient health and care records may be electronic, on paper or a mixture of both, and a combination of working practices and technology ensure your information is kept confidential and secure. Records which health and care providers hold about you may include the following information:

• Details about you, such as address, contact details and next of kin
• Any contact the health or care provider has had with you, such as appointments, clinic visits, emergency appointments, etc.
• Notes/reports and assessments about your health and care
• Details about your planned treatment and care
• Results of investigations, such as blood tests, x-rays, etc.
• Relevant information from other health and social care professionals, relatives or those who care for you
• If you have had a social care assessment, the type of assessment and the date of the next planned review.

The information shared about you is used by the health and social care professionals looking after you to make sure they have the most up to date information available to them so that they can quickly assess you and make the best decisions or plans about your care. At the moment, each care organisation has a different system for managing your records, and there is no way for the information held in these records to be shared electronically in “real time”, i.e. immediately. This means that when a health or social care professional needs to know more about you, they must ask for this information by old fashioned methods, such as telephoning, faxing, or requesting paper copies of your records, all of which can take time, lead to losses of data, or gaps in what is provided. 

Connecting your Care will introduce a new system that will provide a “connected” electronic view between each of these different systems so that the people looking after you can immediately see important information from each of the services that you use, to help them make the best decisions about your care.

We are required by law to provide you with the information in the following 9 subsections. We have also set out a list of definitions below.

1) Controller contact details

Sam Morrison, Executive Director of Adult Social Care and Health
Royal Borough of Kingston
Guildhall
Kingston upon Thames KT1 1EU

Email: sharon.houlden@kingston.gov.uk

2) Data Protection Officer contact details

Rhian Allen
Information Governance
Guildhall
Kingston upon Thames KT1 1EU

Email: rhian.allen@kingston.gov.uk

Purpose of the processing

Information will be shared in order to facilitate “Direct Care” that is delivered to the individual – that is, where a health or care organisation has direct contact with a patient or service user in order to provide them with immediate care or treatment.

Direct Patient Care is defined by the Caldicott Review in 2013 as a clinical, social or public health activity concerned with the prevention, investigation and treatment of illness and the alleviation of suffering of individuals. It includes supporting individuals' ability to function and improve their participation in life and society. It includes the assurance of safe and high-quality care and treatment through local audit, the management of untoward or adverse incidents, person satisfaction including measurement of outcomes undertaken by one or more registered and regulated health or social care professionals and their team with whom the individual has a legitimate relationship for their care.

Lawful basis for processing

The processing of personal data in the delivery of direct care and for providers’ administrative purposes in this organisation, and in support of direct care elsewhere is supported under the following Article 6 and 9 conditions of the: Data Protection Act 2018/General Data Protection Regulation 2016:

Article 6(1)(e) ‘…necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority…’.

Article 9(2)(h) ‘necessary for the purposes of preventative 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...” 

Health and social care services are under legal obligations to share information for the purposes of direct care.

We will also recognise your rights established under UK case law collectively known as the “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality” *

The Sources of the Data and the Recipient or categories of recipients of the processed data

For the first part of this programme we will be connecting your GP system with the local hospital, so your GP can see your hospital record and health professionals in hospitals can see your GP record. In some areas, where other services are already sharing more information than this, then these services will also be included in the first phase. 

When other organisations are joining or there is substantial change to the system you and the general public will be informed or you can the South West London Heath and Care Partnership website for an update:

Organisations in the first phase are:

• SWL GP Practices (GPs in Croydon, Merton, Kingston, Richmond, Sutton and Wandsworth boroughs)
• Croydon Health Services NHS Trust
• St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust
• Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust
• Your Healthcare Community Interest Company
• Royal Borough of Kingston Adult Social Care
• Epsom & St Helier University Hospitals
• London Borough of Sutton Adult Social Care
• London Borough of Sutton Children’s Community Services
• Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Adult Community Services.

 After this first phase, we will move into Phase 2 to gradually bring other care organisations on board, so your health and care record will be available wherever you go in London.

Right to Opt Out

You have the right at any time to opt out of electronic information sharing. If you decide to opt out, then no information will be shared about you via this system.

If you would prefer your information not be shared, you will need to submit an opt out form. These are available from your GP Practice, the Patient Advice and Liaison Office at your local hospital and can be downloaded from Connecting Your Care.

Opting out of the connected-care record view will not mean that your information will not be shared between the people looking after you, just that it will continue to be shared as it is now – via phone, email, fax and letter. Therefore, your care will be no different to how it is now - you will just not be able to take advantage of the benefits that sharing your important information quickly and “in real time” could bring you – especially in emergency situations. 

You will need to tell each health and care professional looking after you about your medical history, your treatment, allergies and medications at every appointment or hospital visit. Decisions about your care may take longer and appointments and tests may be repeated.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the information held about you or the use of your information, please visit:

Connecting Your Care or contact us:

Email: connectingyourcare@swlondon.nhs.uk

Phone:  020 3688 3100

Rights to object

You have the right to object to some or all the information being processed under Article 21 GDPR. Please see section 6 of this privacy notice or alternatively, contact the Data Protection Officer at your care provider for more information. You should be aware that this is a right to raise an objection which will be considered; this is not the same as having an absolute right to have your wishes granted in every circumstance.

Right to access and correct

You have the right to see the data that is being shared about you. This is known as ‘the right of subject access’. You can make a request for this information from a provider.

If your health or care provider holds information about you, and you make a subject access request they will:

• Give you a description of it
• Tell you why it is being held
• Tell you who it could be shared with
• Let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

If you would like to make a ‘subject access request’, you will need to contact your health or care provider’s Data Protection Officer in writing.

There is no right to have accurate medical records deleted except when ordered by a Court of Law.

Retention period

The data will be retained in line with the law and national guidance.

Right to Complain

You have the right to complain regarding the use and sharing of your data, if you think the information has been shared inappropriately. Each provider will have their own complaints process and you will need to contact them directly.

You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office or call their helpline Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (national rate).

* “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”, common law is not written out in one document like an Act of Parliament. It is a form of law based on previous court cases decided by judges; hence, it is also referred to as 'judge-made' or ‘case’ law. The law is applied by reference to those previous cases, so common law is also said to be based on precedent.

The general position is that if information is given in circumstances where it is expected that a duty of confidence applies, that information cannot normally be disclosed without the information provider's consent or, in the absence of consent, a legitimising purpose.

The legal basis for processing your information

The Care Act 2014 sets out the legal basis that applies to the Council’s provision of Adult Social Care. We collect data from you for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority. We also share your information into the Kingston Care Record following the same legal basis. Where the service is optional, we will not process your information until you have consented to receive the service. Once we have your consent for the service, your information will be processed under our statutory authority to provide the service.

How long will we keep your information

We will retain your information for the period in which your information is being used for service provision or for our wider functions including debt collection. In the event of your death, we will keep your records for 3 years, unless we know you have had problems relating to mental health, in which case we will keep your records for 7 years. We will keep financial records relating to any services provided to you for 7 years in all cases. You do not have the right to ask for us to erase the information we keep about you.

National Data Opt- Out

How the NHS and Care Services use your information-

The Royal Borough of Kingston is one of many organisations working in the health and care system to improve care for patients and the public.

Whenever you use a health or care service, such as attending Accident & Emergency or using Community Care services, important information about you is collected in a patient record for that service. Collecting this information helps to ensure you get the best possible care and treatment.

The information collected about you when you use these services can also be used and provided to other organisations for purposes beyond your individual care, for instance to help with:

• Improving the quality and standards of care provided
• research into the development of new treatments
• preventing illness and diseases
• monitoring safety
• planning services

All these uses help to provide better health and care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential patient information about your health and care is only used like this where allowed by law. 

Most of the time, anonymised data is used for research and planning so that you cannot be identified in which case your confidential patient information isn’t needed.

You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. If you are happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. If you do choose to opt out your confidential patient information will still be used to support your individual care.

You can change your mind about your choice at any time. To find out more or to register your choice to opt out, please visit nhs data matters.

Data being used or shared for purposes beyond individual care does not include your data being shared with insurance companies or used for marketing purposes.