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Special Education Needs Use of NHS number

If you and your family are receiving support regarding your child’s special educational needs (SEN) then the NHS may share your NHS number with Middlesbrough Council’s SEN assessment team. This is to enable collaboration between education, health and social care services to provide support and allow the early identification of children and young people’s needs and early intervention to support them

Your NHS number is accessed through an NHS service called the Personal Demographic Service (PDS). Middlesbrough Council sends basic information such as your name, address and date of birth to the PDS in order to find your NHS Number. Once retrieved from the PDS the NHS Number is stored in the Council’s SEN case management system.

This data is retained in the SEN case management system in line with the Council’s record retention policies. These policies are in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, Government record retention regulations and best practice. Further information is available by contacting informationgovernance@middlesbrough.gov.uk.

In terms of the Data Protection Act the Council is both the Data Controller and the Data Processor.

Anonymised and pseudonymised data

Your NHS number may be aggregated with others and anonymised to create statistics that will be used to plan and commission services. No one who accesses this data will be able to see from whom the data originated, nor be able to trace it back to you. However, we may also collect statistical health data from the NHS which they have pseudonymised by using sophisticated encoding techniques. This data could be traced back to you, but only by persons within the NHS who are authorised to access the “key” to decode such data.

Access to information is strictly controlled, based on the role of the professional.

The Council’s IT security and confidentiality policies ensure that your information is protected, and available only to staff directly involved in your care. These policies are available on the Council’s website or by contacting informationgovernance@middlesbrough.gov.uk.

The use of joined up information across education, health and social care brings many benefits and enables the local authority in collaboration with partners to plan and commission services effectively.

You have the right to object to the processing of your NHS Number in this way. If you wish to opt-out from the use of your NHS Number for SEN purposes, please talk with your SEN Case officer, by contacting us on 01642 201831 or email to sen@middlesbrough.gov.uk.