-Confidentiality Policy

Confidentiality Policy

Statement of Intent

The General Data Protection Regulations May 2018 (GDPR) gives you rights to do with the information that businesses, the Government and other organisations hold about you.

Personal information that West Wycombe Preschool uses and holds is covered by the GDPR.

This policy is to make families fully aware of how we may use your personal information should you send your child to West Wycombe Pre-School.

This Policy Covers

• How we collect information about you and any children who attend West Wycombe Pre-school,
• How we use personal information,
• How long we keep personal information,
• Who we share personal information with,
• Where we process personal information,
• Our Staff’s practice to keep information confidential
• Our commitment to you,
• What rights you have over personal information.
• Use of cookies by West Wycombe Pre-school

The Information We Will Collect About You and Your Child

When you send your child/ren to West Wycombe Pre-school, we receive information about you and any children who attend in a number of ways.

This may happen when you:

• Register on our waiting lists
• Complete our Registration Forms
• Complete Government Funding or Pupil Premium Forms
• When you let us know about a change in your personal circumstances (for example, if you change your name or move house).
• When Health Care Plans or Medication Forms are completed
• For the purpose of completing your child’s development records and observations.
• When you authorise referrals to outside agencies for involvement in your child’s development and wellbeing.

We may receive information from another organisations, for example, should we be required to work with paediatric consultants, health visitors or social services (This is not a complete list).

How We Use Your Personal Information

We use information that we have about you and your children for business purposes and to meet the requirements set out within the Early Years Foundation Stage Welfare Standards 2017. These purposes generally fall into the following areas.

Administration – This applies to past, current and potential future children and their parents / guardians / Emergency Contacts. We use this information for the provision of child care and safeguarding.

The personal information we collect and use include:

• The personal details of your child;
• The payment of fees due;
• Details of the child’s Family
• Details of Emergency Contacts
• Medical information (so we can cater for any special needs)
• Religious Preferences
• Ethnic background of your child (this is collected by Oxfordshire County Council as part of the process to obtain Nursery Education Funding for your child). This is also used when West Wycombe Pre-school applies for grants and funding from Government bodies.

Provision of Education – This applies to past, current and potential future children and their parents / guardians.

We use this information to ensure that your child’s development needs are catered for.

The types of information we collect and use include:

• Education and Training Details (so we can ensure your child’s development needs are catered for).

Keeping you informed – This applies to current, past and potential future children and their parents / guardians.

We use this information to keep you updated about events at West Wycombe (e.g. to let you know about events and changes to schedules).

The types of information we collect and use include:

• Email address. So we can email you updates and generate an account on our Tapestry Account so we can keep you up to date on your child’s journey.
• Facebook accounts to link you with our Pre-school Facebook Page
  (Note: This is optional, and you can opt out of receiving email and Facebook updates at any time).

Details of all events and notices will always be posted on the West Wycombe Pre-school’s Calendar on our Website.

Retention Periods for Personal Information

We are required to keep personal information for a number of years after a child has left West Wycombe Pre-school. This is in order to comply with ‘Early Years Foundation Stage Welfare Requirements’ (given legal force by Childcare Act 2006) and other relevant legislation (see below).

Sharing Personal and Private Information

Generally we only use your information within West Wycombe Pre-school. However there are some occasions when we need to share personal information about you and / or your child with outside agencies. Your personal information is never shared with an outside agency unless consent has been granted to do so. However if we decide there is a high risk safeguarding concern that puts your child in immediate danger then we do have authority to share your personal information with the First Response Team and Police.

Occasions where we might share your personal information include;

• If you chose to pay for West Wycombe Pre-school using childcare vouchers. We will share the minimum amount of your personal information necessary with the voucher scheme operator so they can identify you and make the appropriate payments to West Wycombe Pre-school on your behalf.
• If your child is entitled to Nursery Education Funding, we are required to share your personal details with Buckinghamshire County Council in order to identify your child and prove entitlement to funding.
• If you are eligible for Pupil Premium we will share your details with Buckinghamshire County Council and possibly the Department for Work and Pensions.
• If contacted by another Early Years Setting or school we would only ever share your child’s development record and not disclose any personal details.
• Personal information would be used for the purposes of recovering overdue fees.
• In case of an emergency, we may need to share with the emergency services details of your child including details of any medical conditions as provided to us by you.
• To contact you when we want to inform you about events at West Wycombe.

Practice used by our staff to ensure your information is kept confidential

• Staff will not discuss personal information given by parents with other members of staff, except where it affects planning for the child’s needs.
• Staff will not discuss personal information given by parents outside of work.
• Staff induction includes an awareness of the importance of confidentiality.
• Any concerns/evidence relating to a child’s personal safety are kept in a secure, confidential file and are shared with as few people as possible on a “need-to-know” basis.
• Personal information about children, families and staff are kept securely in the Pre-school office which is locked when not in use.
• Issues concerning the employment of staff, whether paid or unpaid, remain confidential to the Pre-school Manager and Committee Chair, Susie Chester.
• Parents’ permission will be sought before observations and photographs are taken of children, either as individuals or in groups. Permission is requested in the Registration Form.
• Parent’s permission is gained for children’s photos to be used for marketing and social media on our Registration Forms. At social events such as sports day all parents will be asked to only display photos of their own child on their personal social media accounts.

Where We Process Personal Information

We will only store and use your personal information in the United Kingdom

Our Commitment to You

We will process your personal information in line with the Data Protection Act. This means that we will:

• only collect and hold information about you which we need for a reason;
• keep your personal information up to date and accurate (to help us do this, please let us know if any of your details change);
• take appropriate steps to protect your personal information from being used without permission, or illegally, and to safeguard your rights; and
• destroy your personal information in a secure way once we no longer need it.

Your Rights over Personal Records

You have certain rights over your personal information. Most importantly, you have a right to ask for a copy of all the personal information we hold about you but there are some legal exceptions to this, such as information which is confidential to West Wycombe Pre-school. If you would like a copy of your personal information, you should contact the Pre-school Manager. We will process your request within one month from the date of your request. You may need to pay £10 administrative cost to cover our time spent collecting your files.

Use of Cookies on Our Website

When someone visits www.West Wycombepreschool.co.uk we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. We collect this information in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

The only cookie we use is to allow us to find out more about how people use our website so that we can improve it and make it more user friendly. You may delete and block all cookies from this site. Details of the cookie we use can be found below:

This policy was adopted by West Wycombe Pre-school Playgroup in October 2010. Policies are updated when necessary and reviewed on a yearly basis.

Reviewed and Amended August 2023