This privacy notice is regularly reviewed and may be updated or revisited at any time. It was last updated in December 2025. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes.
- Introduction
- What personal data do we collect?
- How we use personal data
- Legal Basis for processing
- Who do we share personal data with?
- How long do we keep personal data?
- Automated decisions
- Your rights
- Data Protection Officer.
Introduction
Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in Wigan Council Primary Privacy Notice.
This notice provides additional privacy information for the overall Children and Families service. Individual Privacy Notices are available for specific services.
What personal data do we collect?
To carry out activities and obligations as a Children and Families service we process the following personal data:
- Full name
- Address
- Phone number
- Email address
- Date of birth
- Gender
- Marital status
- Civil partnership
- Relationships
- Information relating to hopes, dreams, skills and achievements
- School details
- GP surgery
- Bank account details
- Payroll and tax/national insurance status information
- Images of children and young people
- Film or voice recordings of children and young people
- Personal information gathered as part of assessment and planning processes which include details of other professionals involved with the family and may include sensitive information such as domestic abuse reports, neglect assessments and concerns relating to child exploitation and other harms outside the home.
We also process the following special category data:
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Disability
- Religious beliefs
- Sexual orientation
- Political opinions
- Health plan, medical reports and other health-related data including NHS number.
We also process the following criminal offence data:
Information relating to offences (including alleged offences), criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences.
How we use personal data
The main purposes for processing your personal data are:
- Contact and referral: to assess and identify the right services for children and young people who have been identified as requiring support in order to promote their welfare and/or who may be at risk of harm or significant harm
- CIN (Children in Need): to assess and identify the right services, and to undertake direct work to promote the welfare of children and support improved outcomes for CIN including children with disabilities
- Child Protection: to assess and identify the right services, and to undertake direct work to protect children and young people at risk of significant harm and improve their outcomes
- CLA (Children Looked After): to assess and identify the right services and provision, and to undertake direct work to safeguard and support improved outcomes for children and young people who come into our care
- Leaving Care: to assess and identify the right services and provision, and to undertake direct work to support improved outcomes for young people (up to age 25) who have been looked after
- Adoption: to assess and identify the right services and provision to support improved outcomes for children who are being adopted
- Early and Family Help: to assess and identify the right services, to undertake direct work to promote the welfare of children and support improved outcomes for children and young people who face vulnerabilities
- To maintain a register of disabled children
- To quality assure the services we provide in order improve our standards of practice and the experiences of our service users
- To provide statutory statistical returns to the government, regulators and other organisations with whom we might be engaged with in order to improve our services and monitor our performance aligned to the national social care outcomes framework
- To provide analysis of service provision, related activity and outcomes to support future service delivery planning and commissioning
- To secure key documents, photographs and memories for children within our care, for whom we are their legal corporate parent.
Legal Basis for processing
There are a number of lawful bases that children’s services use for processing personal data. These are:
- Legal obligation: Children’s services are legally required by a number of UK laws and European regulations and directives to deliver certain services. Services which are required by law are called ‘Statutory Services’, and include adoption, fostering, safeguarding children and promoting their welfare
- Children’s services can be legally required to disclose your personal information in order to deliver these statutory services, and your personal information will also be shared in cases such as prevention or detection of crime or fraud. We do not need your consent to process data if we are doing so on the basis of legal obligation.
- Public task: gives public bodies a lawful basis to process your data where it is deemed necessary for the performance of a task which is carried out in the public interest, and when exercising official authority which is laid down by law. An example of public task is when a social worker supports a family, keeping children and young people safe, and promoting their welfare
- Safeguarding falls under public task and by law. In cases where you or another member of the public may be at risk, your personal information will be shared as necessary in order to protect individuals from harm. We do not need your consent to process data if we are doing so on the basis of public task.
- Consent: where no other lawful basis applies, the Council will ask for your consent to process your personal data. For example, children’s services would need to ask for your consent to participate in a family help plan or signing up to the disabled children’s register. Consent must be fair, freely given and can be withdrawn at any time, and the contact details to do so should have been provided to you at the point of collection.
Examples of the legal obligations, public tasks and official authority we refer to are contained in the following statutes:
- Children Act 1989
- Care Standards Act 2000
- Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000
- Adoption and Children Act 2002
- Children Act 2004
- The Education Act 2004
- Education and Inspections Act 2006
- Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006
- Children and Young Persons Act 2008
- Equality Act 2010
- Children and Families Act 2014.
As well as statutory guidance:
- Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023)
- Working Together Improve School Attendance (2024).
The Digital Economy Act 2017 provides a gateway, within certain guidelines, to enable sharing information with public authorities for the purpose of the improvement or targeting of public services and providing for the monitoring and evaluation of programmes and initiatives.
The conditions we rely on for processing your special category data are:
- Explicit consent
- Health or social care (with a basis in law)
- Reasons of substantial public interest: statutory etc and government purposes.
The condition we rely on for processing your criminal data is:
- Reasons of substantial public interest: statutory etc and government purposes.
Who do we share personal data with?
In addition to the general reasons for data sharing described in the Council’s Primary Privacy Notice, we share data with and collect data from the following when required:
- Other teams within Wigan Council
- Other local authorities
- Educational establishments including schools and early years settings
- Commissioned services - services commissioned by the local authority to deliver a service to children, young people families in the local area
- Statutory safeguarding partners NHS and police
- Other organisations that provide support i.e. residential homes, supported accommodation, personal assistants
- NHS including GPs, 0-19 health services, hospital trusts, mental health services
- Government departments and agencies including, but not limited to, Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Education, Ofsted
- The police
- HM Courts and Tribunals Service, including individual courts
- Youth justice system
- The Probation Service
- The National Crime Agency
- Organisations who we commission to undertake a quality assurance function
- Greater Manchester Combined Authority
- Transport for Greater Manchester
- Any other person or organisation exercising functions or are engaged in activities in relation to children and adults in the authority’s area.
This is not an exhaustive list.
How long do we keep personal data?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any future legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
We must continue to retain necessary data in accordance with our corporate records policy to fulfil legal, statutory and regulatory requirements.
Automated decisions
All the decisions we make about you involve human intervention.
Your rights
More information on how to seek advice to exercise your rights, raise a concern or complain about the handling of your personal data by the council can be found in at Wigan Council Primary Privacy Notice.
Data Protection Officer
If you wish to raise a concern or seek clarification about any aspect of this notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer. Please provide documents to prove your identity along with a description of your concern.
We will respond to all requests within one month.
If you are unhappy with the way that we handle your concern you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) (external link).
Document information
Owner: Colette Dutton, Director of Children and Families
Author: Sarah Hodgson, Service Lead - Transformation and Performance Improvement
Version and date: V8.0 December 2025