ICO reprimands Birmingham Children’s Trust for data breach

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a reprimand to Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company after a child’s personal information was inappropriately disclosed to another family.

The child protection and assessment department at Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company, which is owned by Birmingham City Council, was working with two neighboring families when the data breach occurred.

A child welfare plan was disclosed to a family which contained both personal information and criminal allegations relating to a child in the neighboring family. This information was included in the error after being copied from the meeting minutes.

The ICO’s investigation found that Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company did not have adequate policies or sufficient practical guidance to ensure the security of personal information.

Sally-Anne Poole, Head of Investigations at the ICO, said:

“Children’s personal information requires additional protection and should be treated with great care. This disclosure of personal information by social workers at Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company was a breach of confidentiality which would have caused distress to both the child and their family.

“We expect all organizations that process personal information to ensure they have robust policies and procedures in place to protect it. We will take action when personal information, particularly that of children and young people, is compromised.”

The ICO has recommended that Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company take further steps to ensure compliance with data protection legislation, including:

• Implement a more granular approach to data protection and create a standard operating procedure for the production of welfare documents.
• Include a process for any social work product to be independently verified by someone other than the author before disclosure.
• Create and implement a corporate writing policy that provides staff with the knowledge and tools to write product as needed.

The reprimand can be read in full here.