General

Smart Occupational Therapy Ltd is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.  This is renewed annually.

Smart Occupational Therapy Ltd uses a MacBook Air.  This is updated regularly.  The computer has a password only known to the occupational therapist. At work it is stored in a secure building.

Junk emails are not opened.

No personal data is used for marketing purposes or processing that is not relevant.  Personal data is not shared with third parties.

Only relevant information is obtained for the purposes of assessment and intervention.

Emails to school only have the initials of the child and are sent to specific staff involved with the child.

Telephone conversations with parents or professionals are carried out in a private space to maintain confidentiality, i.e. no public areas, no distractions, only school staff present.

Relevant emails regarding students are saved as pdf documents in the child’s electronic file (on Dropbox).

Data processing

Personal data is processed relating only to the children and young people who are referred to the service by the agreement holder.  Data is processed for the purposes of completing an assessment and formulating recommendations for the issues identified on the referral form.

The personal data includes identifiers such as Name, Date of Birth, Address, Parent(s)/Carer(s) details, telephone number and Special Educational Needs.

Secure storage of information  

All documents are stored on the iCloud using Dropbox (iCloud software).

Laptop used by the occupational therapist has password – this is only known to the user.  In the event of the laptop being stolen, the Dropbox account can be wiped by logging into the account with another device.

No personal data is held on external devices.  Information is only accessible via Dropbox.  The Dropbox account has a password that is only known to the occupational therapist.

Paper copies of current review reports and programmes are kept in a locked cabinet at the address of the business.  Keys are kept in a location only known to the occupational therapist. Any paperwork held on Dropbox that is not required is shredded.

All paper-based information (i.e. score sheets) are scanned and uploaded to iCloud storage.

Reports are emailed to each school to a named person, agreed with the school.  This has a password, which is emailed separately and directly to the named person. This password is changed termly.

Data retention

Smart Occupational Therapy Ltdwill retain records for children and young people until the child reaches the age of 25 (or 26 if they are 17 when intervention ends) or eight years after their death, if sooner.  If a child’s illness or death could be relevant to an adult condition or have genetic implications for their family, records may be kept for longer.

Parent/Guardian consentand withdrawal of consent 

The occupational therapy referral has a section on consent.  This is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the form.

This includes consent to obtain information, share information with the school or agreed professionals, assess the child/young person, writing a reportandright to withdraw consent at any time.

Consent is not retrospective.