Information to help us provide you with advice
When you get advice via Family Rights Group’s telephone advice line, an adviser will ask you for information that is relevant to the situation that you are calling about. The lawful basis on which we will seek to collect this information from you is ‘legitimate interest’. However, if when describing the situation that you need help with you share with an adviser relevant but especially sensitive information (e.g. about your health, race, ethnic origin, religion – known as ‘special category data’) then we will usually be processing this information on the basis of ‘social protection’ unless the information shared indicates an immediate threat to life and limb, in which basis will the ‘vital interest’.
The information that an adviser will ask you for will include:
- Your name and contact details so that we can:
- Send you follow up advice materials after your call (e.g. advice sheets)
- Identify the record relating to your call which will help advisers understand the background and the advice you have previously been given, if you call back for further advice.
- Relevant personal information that will help us to provide you with the right information and advice for your situation.
We keep this information in a case record and an adviser will: explain this to you at an early stage of your call and confirm if you agree to a record being created (there is further information about how we use case records in the ‘if we are concerned about your safety or the safety of someone else’ tab below).
We will only ask for the personal information that we need and we will:
- Always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us about your situation
- Explain to you why we need the information that we ask you for and how we use your information
- Treat your information as confidential.
If there is certain information that you don’t want to give to us, you don’t have to. For example, if you want to stay anonymous we’ll only record information about the problem you are calling about and make sure you’re not identified.
Information to help us understand who is using our service
After we have provided you with the advice you need, advisers will usually ask you for some additional monitoring information. Collecting this kind of monitoring information helps us to understand more about who is using our advice service. If there is certain information you don’t want to give us, then you do not have to share this with the adviser.
The lawful basis on which we collect and use monitoring information is ‘legitimate interest’. If however, the monitoring information being sought is about whether you have a disability, or is about your ethnicity, this is considered to be a more sensitive type of information. It is known as ‘special category data’.
The lawful basis on which we collect and use that kind of more sensitive information is ‘explicit consent’. An adviser will ask, and formally record, whether you consent to us collecting and recording that information about you. It is up to you whether you give your consent or not. You do not have to.
Information to help us understand more about children involved with, or in need of help from, children’s services
After you have been provided with the advice you need, advisers will also usually ask you for some additional monitoring information about the child/ren whose situation you have called about.
The information about the child/ren that the adviser will ask for is their:
- Age
- Ethnicity
- And whether they have a disability.
Information about a child’s ethnicity and disability is considered especially sensitive. It is known as ‘special category data’. Collecting this kind of sensitive data helps us to understand more about which children social workers become involved with. The lawful basis on which we collect and use this information is ‘legitimate interest’ and on the condition of ‘substantial public interest – equality of opportunity or treatment.’
If there is certain information that you do not want to give us about the child or children, then you do not have to share this with the adviser.