When the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Act 2020 came into force on 21 March 2022 it removed the defence of reasonable punishment. From this time, all physical punishment of children is illegal in Wales.
If the police decide to take further action against a parent who has physically punished their child, they might offer an out of court disposal (OOCD), to avoid the potential of prosecution through the courts for low level offences. A condition of the OOCD would be engagement in parenting support which is intended to develop positive non-violent parenting practices.
The Out of Court Parenting Support Grant provides funding to enable local authorities to deliver this tailored parenting support.
What types of personal data do we process?
In order to deliver the parenting support in an effective way, we need to collect and use your personal information. The types of personal data we process include, but are not limited to:
- Your name
- Your contact details
- Information about your family
- Information about the offence
How do we obtain your personal data?
We obtain your personal data from sources including:
- Referrals from the Police
- Personal data provided by you
How do we use your personal data?
We may collect and use personal information to:
- Make an assessment of an individual’s parenting needs to tailor the parenting support sessions to their specific needs.
- Provide the individual with access to the parenting support.
- Share information with the police so that they know whether the individual has complied with the conditions of the out of court disposal.
- Meet safeguarding obligations.
We may share data with Welsh Government for monitoring and evaluation purposes, in order to assess whether the delivery of the parenting support is effective and meeting the needs of a range of individuals (in this instance individual’s data will be aggregate and anonymised).
What is our lawful basis for processing your personal data?
Under the UK GDPR, the lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is:
- Article 6 (1)(e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.
Some types of personal data are more sensitive than others and need more protection. This is classed as ‘special category data’ and could include information about racial or ethnic origin and religious beliefs etc. Our lawful basis for processing special category data is:
- Article 9 (2)(g) processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.
The organisations we may share your personal data with
We may sometimes need to share personal data with other partner organisations that are involved in the delivery of the out of court parenting support.
This may include:
- Other departments within Cardiff Council
- Police
- Welsh Government
- Other partner organisations who provide family support, for whom the Council is a referral pathway partner.
Your data protection rights
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
Your right of access
You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification
You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure
You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing
You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing
You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to data portability
You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have 1 month to respond to you.
How to complain
If you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that the service area has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the
Information Commissioner's Office: 0303 123 1113.
Contacting Data Protection
Please contact the Data Protection Officer for further information.
Data Protection Officer
Information Governance Team
County Hall
Atlantic Wharf
Cardiff
CF10 4UW
dataprotection@cardiff.gov.uk
This privacy notice was last updated in May 2022.