This privacy notice is designed to help you understand how we use personal information when delivering our Adult services, we have set out below the services types, the information we may use to deliver the services, who we may share it with, and how long we will keep it.

The services covered by this privacy notice

Care Connections Service (Adults)

The Care Connectors organise care and social care support services that are required for individual open to the services. They work with our social care providers, and third parties where specific, off contract care is required.

Adult social care costs

We need your information to calculate how much you can afford to pay towards your social care costs and to provide you with advice and information.

Bus pass and concessionary travel

We collect and use the information you provide in order to determine your eligibility for an application for a bus pass.

Channel and Prevent Panels

Channel and Prevent multi agency panels are part of the Prevent strategy. The process is a multi-agency approach to identify and provide support to individuals who are at risk of being drawn into terrorism, including people holding and expressing violent extremist views. The overall aim of the programme is early intervention and diverting people away from potential risk.

Community Access team

The team provides a first point of contact for citizens of West Cheshire who wish to discuss their own personal needs or request an Adult Social Care Assessment. The team undertake screening tools and initial assessments for citizens of West Cheshire and can refer to other statutory, third sector or other agency services.

Community Mental Health team (CMHT)

The CMHT provide social care and care coordination support to adults who are open to community mental health service and/or have assessed social care needs. They work alongside health colleagues to provide support across health and social care.

Continuing health care

Continuing Health Care Social Work team - provide expertise to practitioners when applying for continuing health care. This is largely done by ascertaining whether a person has a Primary Health Care Need. A Primary Health Care Need is ascertained on completion of a decision support tool.

Deferred payments

The Care Act 2014 places a duty on all local authorities to operate a deferred payment scheme so that a person can defer or delay paying the costs of their care home until a later date. Your information is required to assess whether you met the criteria for a deferred payment agreement and to advise you so that you can make an informed decision.

Deprivation of Liberty

The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) is designed to ensure that an individual’s right are protected if they are detained in a hospital or care home and lack mental capacity. They undertake DoLS assessments, but in addition, also undertake Best Interest Assessments

They also liaise with individuals and the courts about cases considered by the Court of Protection, and ensure that individuals have appropriate representation.

Direct payments and prepaid accounts

We use your information to manage your direct payment and prepaid account in line with our statutory responsibilities under the Care and Support (Direct Payments) Regulations 2014. The type and amount of information that we hold will depend on the nature of your direct payment and how it is managed. All of our direct payment services are subject to terms and conditions providing specific details on your agreement with us and will further inform you of the process and information relevant to you.

Further information can be found on our direct payments and prepaid accounts privacy notice.

Domestic violence

Provide advice, emotional support, and practical assistance and safety measures for victims of domestic violence.

Hospital teams

The hospital teams work with multidisciplinary teams within the hospital to identify needs, assess and plan how to meet identified need, coordinate, provision and deliver safe, effective care. They are also responsible for undertaking Mental Capacity assessments and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.

Independent transfer of Care Co-ordinator service

We will use your information in order to complete an assessment used to inform your transfer of care from hospital to a care home setting.

Integrated Care Partnership

Facilitate an integrated and person centred approach to health and social care to help prevent inappropriate admission to hospital or long term care and help reduce duplication and variation in response

Learning Disability service

The Learning Disability team undertake Care Act Assessments for adults with a learning disability and/or their carers, in line with the Care Act 2014. They assess in both the community and hospital settings, liaising with the appropriate professionals to support timely discharges form hospital. The team source packages of care and residential provision and complete unscheduled and annual reviews, including out of area reviews.

Local offer

Supports the Adult Social Care Directorate navigate to information and services available in the community. Work with public, private, voluntary and third sector agencies to provide information about available services in the community, and signpost individuals to the appropriate support.

Local Safeguarding Adults Board

As part of the Care Act 2014 the Board has a statutory duty to commission Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs), when an adult dies because of abuse or neglect or has experienced significant harm because of abuse or neglect and there is a concern that partner agencies could have worked more effectively to protect the adult. We will use your information so that lessons can be learned from the case, and those lessons applied to practice preventing similar harm occurring again.

Mental Health service

The Mental Health service offers a range of meaningful activities to people who are trying to overcome mental health problems.

Occupational therapy

The service offer a wide range of assessment and treatment approaches designed to assess, and provide solutions which meet a range of an individual’s needs including physical, emotional, cognitive and social.

The occupational therapy assessment will take into account the person’s disabilities and their individual health and living situation including any issues that their family or carer has in providing them with support.

Patch team

The patch team are responsible for assessing older and physically disabled individuals, where they have two or more identified care needs. They undertake care assessments, support planning; and reviews of packages of care around approximately 12 weeks, earlier if it is deemed appropriate. They are also responsible for undertaking section 42 safeguarding enquiries where the referral is not in relation to the provider.

Reablement

Reablement are a council operated service which aims to support people to regain skills of daily living and to live active healthy lives in their community through short term intervention which has a focus on rehabilitation. This is a time limited service which is designed to last no more than six weeks.

deferred payments - assesses whether you met the criteria for a deferred payment agreement
Rapid Response and Reablement service – provides social care support to adults in partnership with the NHS
research into health and wellbeing - researches into health, wellbeing, lifestyle and social circumstances of adults in West Cheshire

Review team

Undertake Care Act assessments, reviewing the current support in place, and transfer to Patch teams where changes to support are identified.

Safeguarding team

The safeguarding team accept referrals where the following criteria apply:

the person at risk meets the definition of an ‘adult at risk’ as outlined in the Care Act 2014 and detailed in North West Safeguarding Policy and the Cheshire West and Chester LSAB safeguarding procedures.
the alleged abuse happened in Cheshire West and Chester Local Authority geographical area
the allegation relates to any paid carer/member of staff
the allegation reaches the criteria for initiating safeguarding procedures

The team advocate on behalf of service users and carers, as appropriate and take the lead in certain specific safeguarding investigations.

Visual impairment

The Visual Impairment team undertakes social care and enablement assessments for individuals who are visually impaired.

Information we hold about you

We only collect and use the minimum amount of personal information required when delivering a service to you. Wherever possible we use non-identifiable personal information.

The service may use some or all of the personal information below:

your name, address, date of birth
visual images, personal appearance and behaviour
national identifiers such as NHS number, National Insurance number etc.
information about your family
details about your lifestyle and social circumstances
financial details
employment and education details
details about your housing needs
the IP address that you accessed any of our online services from
case file information
criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences
physical or mental health details
racial or ethnic origin
offences (including alleged offences)
religious or other beliefs of a similar nature
social care support outcomes
advocacy details

We get most of this information from you, but we may also get some of this data from:

central Government agencies
other local authorities
health and social care provider
police and probation services
members of the public (referrer)
commissioned partners
family members
other social care teams

Why we need your information and how we use it

We use your information to:

deliver the service, or handle your query
plan and improve the services we offer
detect and prevent crime or fraud
research, however this would be in anonymised form unless we ask for your consent to use your personal information for this purpose
evidence positive outcomes to central government funding agencies

Who your information may be shared with

Sometimes we may need to share your information, but we will only do so where it is necessary or required by law. We will only share the minimum information for each circumstance.

We may sometimes need to share some of your information with:

health service providers including NHS Agencies (GPs, hospitals, ambulance, Health Visitor, Mental Health services)
education providers
care providers, e.g. day care, domiciliary, residential
government agencies (e.g. Department of Health, Department of Work and Pensions)
support groups for people with disabilities
local government
police
substance misuse agencies
advocacy services
fire and rescue services
prepaid card providers
direct payment support services
housing associations
technology assistance providers
supported accommodation providers
social care providers

In addition, if you are receiving health and wellbeing support from us, then the NHS may share your NHS number with us. This is so that us and the NHS are using the same number to identify you whilst providing your care. By using the same number ourselves and the NHS can work together more closely to support you.

We will use the NHS number in an integrated care record system across a number of support services including:

GP’s
hospitals
community matrons
district nurses
social care practitioners.

More information can be found on the Cheshire Care Record.

In line with the National Data Guardian’s opt-out service, you have the right to opt-out of allowing use of your personal data for some secondary purposes such as service planning, research and risk stratification.

Information relating to opt-outs is held securely within NHS systems. Where our Health and Wellbeing Services need to use personal data, they will run an automated check of a data set against the NHS list and remove data relating to any NHS numbers where an opt-out has been flagged, before producing statistical reports and similar information. This does not apply to data which has been anonymised in line with the ICO’s Code of Practice. Opting out will not affect how your data is used and shared for your direct care.

Local authorities need to plan services to make the best use of our budget for social care so that we can meet the needs of our residents for the future, so please consider this before deciding to opt out.

If you wish to exercise your right to opt-out, visit the NHS website. You'll need your NHS number or the email address or mobile number held by your GP practice to verify your identity on the website.

We may also use Data Processors to support these activities, for example by providing the systems we need to or delivering services on our behalf

These include:

our case management system Liquid Logic
other data processors supporting your care might include domiciliary care providers, residential nursing care providers, day care providers, education providers and prepaid card providers within the European Economic Area

The Data Controller

We are the Data Controller for this processing except our residential/nursing and domiciliary care providers who will also be Data Controllers for the purposes of providing you with care and support.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud and money-laundering and to verify your identity. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance, or employment.

The lawful basis for the processing

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you, under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for using your personal information are:

we have a legal obligation (GDPR Article 6 (c)
we need to protect your vital interests (GDPR Article 6 (d)
we need it to perform a public task (GDPR Article 6 (e)

When we collect data about your race, health (including biometric or genetic data), sex life, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, politics or trade union membership, we also rely on the following lawful basis:

we need to protect your vital interests in situations where you are incapable for giving consent (GDPR Article 9 (2) (c)
we need to collect it for Substantial Public Interest in order to comply with UK legislation (GDPR Article 9 (2) (g)
we are providing you with health and social care support (GDPR Article 9 (2) (h))
we need to collect it for public health (GDPR Article 9 (2) (i)
we need to analyse your information (GDPR Article 9 (2) (j))

Here is a list of the legislation we rely on when using your personal information to meet our legal obligations or public tasks.

Protecting your information

Your information will be securely stored on our network

How long will we keep your personal information?

We will only use your personal information whilst delivering the service to you and to deal with any questions or complaints that we may receive about this. In practice, this means that your information will be deleted seven years after we stop using it where a service has been provided unless the law requires us to keep it for a longer period (see bulleted list below).

vulnerable adult protection - 10, 20 or 30 years dependent on the severity of the case
accommodation support - six years after no longer in receipt of service
asylum seekers support - seven years
case management - six years after no longer in receipt of services
community living and disabilities support - six years after no longer in receipt of service
mental health support - 20 years after end of treatment or service provision or eight years after death
carers support - six years after no longer in receipt of service
vulnerable adult protection - 10, 20 or 30 years dependent on the severity of the case
legal issues - three years

If we need to use your information for research or reports, your information will be anonymised and any information taken from notes (hand written or typed) during any consultation sessions will be securely destroyed. The information will continue to be used in a summarised and anonymised form in any research reports or papers that are published. The anonymised information in the papers may be of historic interest and may be held in public archives indefinitely

Your rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

your right of access - you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information
your right to rectification - you have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
your right to restriction of processing - you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances
your right to object to processing - you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

To make a request follow the instructions on our Data protection for you page.

How to complain if you are unhappy about how your data is used

You can complain directly to our Data Protection team online or by post.

By post: Data Protection Officer, The Portal, Wellington Road, Ellesmere Port, CH65 0BA

Our Policies and Procedures

Policies