This page explains how information about you will be held and processed by Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service (DCYOS). You can also find out about the General Data Protection Regulations and Data Protection Act 2018 and your rights on our general privacy notice. 

This page contains information about:

• who we are
• why we collect your personal information
• the legal basis for using your information
• who we may share your information with
• how you can access the information we hold about you
• how long we keep information about you
• further information and Data Protection Officer.

Who we are

Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service is a multi-agency partnership providing youth justice services across Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole and Dorset. This means that we work with young people whose behaviour has brought them into contact with the police.

We provide advice to the police and to the courts about how to deal with young people who have committed criminal offences. We work with young people who have committed offences to help them make positive changes and repair the harm they have caused.

We make sure that young people keep to the requirements of their Youth Caution or their court order, and we take action if this does not happen.

We also work with victims of offences committed by young people, to give them the chance to take part in restorative justice to help repair the harm they have experienced.

As part of our work, we sometimes also work with parents and carers of the young people.

Our team includes employees of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, Dorset Police, Dorset HealthCare Trust and National Probation Service Dorset.

Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service will be the Data Controller for the personal information you provide. Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This could be your name and contact details. As the Data Controller Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service will use your information to provide you with our services.

Why we collect your personal information

We will collect enough personal information in order to provide you with services for the purpose of preventing offending by young people, keeping young people and other people safe, and repairing harm caused to victims. 

The services we provide are:

• advice to courts and police about the best youth justice decisions for young people and the community
• providing an ‘Appropriate Adult’ for young people during police interviews and at court
• meeting young people, and sometimes their families, to help them make changes to their behaviour and to make amends for their offence, as required by the young person’s Youth Caution or court order
• sharing information with other services who work with the young person so that we can achieve our purpose of  preventing offending by young people, keeping young people and other people safe, and repairing harm caused to victims.

We are not permitted to collect information we do not need or will not use. This document covers information you have provided direct to the Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service and information which has been shared with us by other organisations.

If we don’t need your personal information we will either keep your details anonymous, if we already have it for another service, or we won’t ask you for it. If we use your personal information for research or analysis, we will always keep your details anonymous or use a fake name.

We don’t sell your personal information to anyone else.

The legal basis for using your information

According to the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), and the Data Protection Act 2018 we must have a reason to collect and use your information. 

This will be:

• to deliver services and support you
• to enable us to manage the services we provide
• to train and manage our workers who deliver those services
• to investigate any worries or complaints you may have about our goods or services
• to check the quality of our services
• to help with research and planning of new services.

There are a number of legal reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information. For this service the legal reasons are:

(i) Legal obligation: it is required by law (the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and the Legal Aid, Punishment and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012).

(ii) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life, when we work with people who are at risk of significant, life-threatening harm or who pose a risk of significant, life-threatening harm to other people.

(iii) Public task: the processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

Our service also needs to use sensitive personal data also called “special category data” which requires more protection to keep it safe. This is often information you would not want to be widely known and is very personal to you. It includes:

• sexuality or sexual heath
• religious or spiritual or philosophical beliefs
• ethnicity
• physical or mental health
• criminal history.

We will take extra care of this data. The legal reason for us to collect and use this personal information is that it is necessary to perform our statutory duties. 

Who we may share your information with

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide your personal information to other organisations, for example the court service.

We may also share your personal information with these organisations, as part of the Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service partnership arrangements. The DCYOS partners are: Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, Dorset Council, NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group, Dorset HealthCare Trust, Dorset Police, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, and National Probation Service Dorset. 

The information we may share about you with these other organisations would be limited to what is necessary and would only be shared with relevant sections of those organisations. For local authorities, the relevant sections would be Children’s Services, Community Safety teams and education and training providers. In some cases there may also be information sharing with adult care services to ensure safe care for children who are turning 18 and may become classed as ‘vulnerable adults’. For health services, the relevant sections would be Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, GPs, paediatric services, sexual health services, substance misuse services and Criminal Justice Liaison and Diversion services. 

Your information will not be disclosed to any other organisations, except where we are required and allowed to by law. Sometimes we may believe that there are additional services which will be of benefit to you, where we do not have a lawful basis to share your information without your consent. In those circumstances we will explain the situation to you and ask for your consent to share the information. We will only share your details with these organisations if we have your consent. We will not share your information otherwise.

Accessing the information we hold about you

You have the right to request, in writing, details of the information that is held about you and also the right to access a copy of the information. This may be by the Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service providing copies of documents or by inviting you to view the records at one of its offices, if appropriate. Please see our webpage for further information about how to make a subject access request. 

Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service will not charge a fee to access your information. Sometimes there may be information that we are not allowed to show you, such as:

• legal information or advice
• crime prevention and detection records
• information that we believe may be harmful to you and your well-being
• details about or provided by other people – this is called third party information (e.g. information from the police).

You may also ask us to:

• stop processing your information if this causes or might cause damage or distress
• amend any of your data which you feel is inaccurate. You can also ask for information to be blocked, erased or destroyed.
• transfer your information electronically to another service provider.
• consider a claim for compensation for any damages caused by a breach of the Data Protection regulations.

If you give consent for us to use your information, you may withdraw this at any time. However, this may affect our ability to continue to provide you with a service.

You can find out more about accessing the information which we hold about you either by asking your YOS worker or by emailing dcyos@bcpcouncil.gov.uk.

How long we keep information about you

When Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service works with a young person, we will retain personal information for five years after the end of our work. However, we reduce the information we hold to the minimum required documents one year after the end of our work with the young person.

For young people who are assessed as likely, when they become adults, to pose a risk to children we will retain the information we hold about them for 100 years after the end of our work. 

When we work with victims of crime we retain any personal information in a separate case record, with access restricted to relevant team members, and we only retain the personal information for the duration of the work with the victim.

When we work with parents of young people on our caseload we store the parent’s personal information in separate electronic and paper case files. We retain the parent’s personal information for twelve months after we finish working with the parent.

Further information If you have a concern about how we are using your information, we would ask you to contact us in the first instance using the address below: 

Dorset Combined Youth Offending Service
Bournemouth Learning Centre
Ensbury Avenue
Bournemouth
BH10 4HG

Email: dcyos@bcpcouncil.gov.uk

Data Protection Officer

The Data Protection Officer role for BCP Council is held by the:

Team Leader
Contracts, Commercial and Information Governance.

If you have any queries or concerns about how your personal information please contact us using our general enquiries form first, or by writing to or visiting us at:

Information Commissioner

For further information about Information Rights legislation, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk or by telephone 0303 123 1113.