The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards privacy notice

We are the Supervisory Body of Waltham Forest with a legal duty to assess and authorise the deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS) for people who lack mental capacity and are deprived of their liberty in Care Homes and Hospitals. 

The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards [DoLs] procedure is based on two organisations working together known as the Supervisory Body and the Managing Authority. 

The Supervisory Body is the local authority (Waltham Forest) in England responsible for its ordinary residents. The Managing Authority is the Care Home or Hospital where the person is staying or placed and lacks capacity to consent to being there. 

The managing authority is responsible for an application to the Supervisory Body to request for a DoLS authorisation for their resident or patient who lacks mental capacity and maybe deprived of their liberty. 

As the Supervisory Body we are under a legal duty to assess and authorise deprivation of liberty once we become aware of it occurring or about to occur. This can be through an application from a care home or hospital (DoLS Form 1) or through notification from Adult Social Care placing someone that lacks capacity to consent. 

If you have questions regarding this service or our privacy practices, you can contact us by e-mail or in writing at the address below:

Information we hold about ‘the person’

This may include all or some of the following:

• Your personal details 
• Your medical history and details of any diagnosis 
• Information about family members and your relationship with them 
• Details about lasting Power of Attorney or Deputy 
• The names and contact details of close friends, families or others interested in your care. 
• Personal and family history 
• Your life history 
• Your expressed wishes, values, and beliefs
• Information on available options in the community, such as your own home 
• Your care and support needs 
• Details on health and social care services involved with your care. 
• Information shared with us by others interested and/or involved in your care such as:- 
  • Family or friends or carers 
  • Hospital or care home staff
  • Other health and social care staff 
• Information that other organisations (such as health or other care service providers) may share with us to help us understand your situation and care arrangement more effectively.
• Reports relating to your situation and care arrangement (e.g. care and support plans and reviews)
• Any documents sent to us relating to you.
• Records of phone conversations relating to you (e.g. conversations between DoLS Assessors and care home staff or NHS staff or GP, hospital consultant and Adult Social Care staff, or conversations between members of your family/your representative or providers of care).

When undertaking a DoLS assessment, we must collect and use personal information of the person’s being assessed including their relatives/friends interested in their care.  We process this personal information to complete the DoLS procedure for applications received by us from hospital and care homes. 

Further personal information may be shared or collated from the DoLS Assessors, selected by us (Supervisory Body) during the assessment process. 

We gained access to records, DoLS Assessors (selected by us are legally binding to examine and scrutinise records and make copies of records they consider relevant to their assessment (para 131 schedule A1) 

The legal bases for processing your personal information are:

• Compliance with our legal obligation
• Contract for the supply of services.
• Consent

DoLS staff will update our record with any details relating to your situation that will assist the Supervisory Body (us) in supporting your deprivation of liberty authorisation. The information we hold about you is treated as confidential and can only be seen by authorised staff and others with a right to know, including you.

(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

(b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.

(c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).

(d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life.

(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.

(f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.)

For more details on the Lawful Basis see the ICO guidance 

Your information is accessed by staff working in Waltham Forest’s Adult Social Care Services, through the council database system, Mosaic by a number of Services / Teams including:

• Older People Service Teams
• Learning Disability Service Teams
• Adult Safeguarding Team
• Hospital Discharge Teams
• Occupational Therapy Service Teams
• Children’s Service Teams
• NELFT Adult Mental Health Service Teams
• Legal Services 
• Finance Team

This list is not exhaustive but staff in each area will only access the personal information that is essential to carry out their work and statutory functions but may share data between the respective teams where this is necessary to provide for your care and support needs. 

Relevant information about you may be passed to external organisations to carry out their statutory duties or services as instructed of them. The types of organisations we may pass your information to are listed below:

• Advocate Service Provider or relevant Person’s Representative (if one you have been appointed)
• Health care professionals including your GP, nurse or hospital consultants.
• Continuing Healthcare Commissioning (CHC) is responsible for organising your care arrangement or the delivery of NHS services in England.
• Providers of residential and nursing care services
• Agency providers of DoLS Assessors' services
• Other Local Authorities if you are placed or is transferred outside of the borough.
• Government departments such as the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG

We also have legal duties to pass information about you to the Court of Protection for the purpose of an appeal to the DoLS authorisation and in relation to a Court Order where there is a legal obligation to do so.

All organisations we pass your information will have an information-sharing agreement with us to ensure they meet the standards of the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. They will be covered by a legal basis allowing them to collect, use and share your personal information. 

We manage, maintain, and protect all information according to legislation, our policies and best practice. All information is stored, processed, and communicated using the Council’s secure email system. We provide training to staff who handles personal information and how to report and escalate when something goes wrong.  

When we no longer require keeping information about you, we will review it and archive it for any relevant legal retention period and ultimately dispose of it in a secure manner.