What you need to know
When you have care from any of our services or you are an unpaid carer, we will collect and keep records about your care electronically or in paper format. We will keep this information safe, letting only the right people see it. It is important that the information we hold about you is right. Please tell your social care worker if you have any changes to your name, address or if you find that anything that is wrong or missing from your record.
For more information about My Shared Care Record and details on how to opt out, visit the My Care Record page on the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Integrated Care System website.
The information we hold about you might include:
- Name
- Address
- Date of birth
- Ethnicity
- Contact details
- Next of Kin
- Relationships, and details of people you have asked to act on your behalf
- Information recorded as part of your referral to our services
- Information recorded in an assessment of your care and support needs
- Health information
- Information about visits or contacts with you made as part of your care
- Information about your mental capacity
- Details about other agencies involved in supporting you
- Financial information and your National Insurance number
- Risks
- NHS number
The NHS may also share your NHS Number with us so that we can both see the same information and can amend your Shared Care Record. This is so that any professional person involved in your health and care can view and add to it, unless you have said you don’t want us to share this.
Staff might keep notes or recordings of their conversation with you, but these will be destroyed once we have entered your information into our electronic notes. Staff who visit you at home, may be able to see some of the information you have provided to us on their mobile work devices.
To best support you, we may share information about you with the following people and organisations who might be able to help you with some of your care and support:
- Hospitals and community health services
- Your GP
- Care home providers
- Family members and other people who might be helping to care for you
- Members of the community or voluntary services
- Housing providers
- Courts
- The police
- Our finance and legal departments
- National government departments
- Independent regulators or investigators where this is necessary to deal with complaints
We allow certain people involved in your care to see your records, so you don’t have to repeat your story, and they have the information they need to support you properly.
We will always discuss with you who we plan to share your information with, and this will vary depending on the services you are receiving and the support you need.
You can find more information about the shared health and care record in Peterborough on the My Care Record website
We will always try to respect your wishes on who we share information with.
However, it is important to remember that if the council cannot pass your information to other organisations, this may limit the care and support we can offer and could delay or prevent you from getting the help you need.
Sometimes your personal information may need to be shared against your wishes, this might be because we have a legal duty to do so. For example, to give information to courts in legal cases or for a court order, to prevent a crime, or if there is a risk of harm to you or another person.
We only keep information for as long as it is needed. This will be based on either a legal need (where a law says we must keep information for a certain amount of time) or an agreed time set by the Council.
For most of the records we hold about you, this will be for eight years after we have stopped working with you, although it’s likely to be longer for mental health records.
We are committed to helping people to stay independent, safe, well and live a fulfilled life so sometimes we will carry out surveys and audits to help us improve the care and support that we give you.
To find people who could help us with surveys and audits, your social care worker might tell you about these and ask if you would like to be included.
If selected, we will explain the survey or audit to you and ask if you agree to this first. You are free to say no at any time and this decision will never affect the standard of care and support we give you.
If you are worried about how we use your information, feel free to talk to your social care worker about this.
The UK law called the General Data Protection Regulations give you the right to see any records we hold about you whether this is on a computer or paper. You can contact Adult Social Care to see your social care records by:
Telephone: 01733 864668
Email: foi@peterborough.gov.uk
If we do keep records about you, we will ask you to read, discuss and confirm that you are aware of our information sharing agreement below.
I understand that unless I raise specific concerns:
- You may share my information between members of the team who are supporting me.
- You may share my information between health and social care staff who are involved with my care and support.
- You may share my information with health colleagues when managing complaints relating to my care and support, or as part of joint health and social care service.
- Adult Social Care might contact me and ask if I want to be involved in surveys and audits.
- I understand that I have the right to change my mind at any point as to who you may share my information with, and that it is my responsibility to tell my social care worker this. Also, I understand that this may limit some of the care and support available to me.
If you are worried about something, or want to make a complaint:
Telephone: 01733 296331
Email: ASCcomplaints@peterborough.gov.uk
Other useful links
- Department of Health and Social Care
- Caldicott Guardians
- Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) has responsibility for ensuring good practice in all areas of Freedom of Information and Data protection. Tel: 01625 545 745