Birmingham Children's Trust slammed for disclosing child's personal details to neighbouring family

An organisation responsible for caring for disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in Birmingham disclosed the personal details of a child to a neighbouring family. Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company (BCTCIC) has been ‘reprimanded’ by the Information Commissioner’s Office after it shared identifying information, including details of a criminal allegation against a child, with a neighbouring family.

The breach occurred on November 10, 2022, when the Trust’s Child Protection and Review department inadvertently copied a statement with information from an earlier ‘strategy meeting’ between BCTCIC and West Midlands Police, which contained a summary of concerns raised by the neighbouring family, regarding a child.

But the statement contained personal details of that child, including criminal allegations, and was accidentally copied into a danger and harms section of a Child Protection Plan for a neighbouring child. The plan was approved for disclosure, without anyone realising it included the sensitive information.

Read more: Breaking: Rescue plan for Birmingham's 'axed' life saving early help schemes

The mum of the neighbouring family had raised concerns about her child interacting with the other child. And the Trust had been working with both families.

A social worker was said to immediately contact the recipients of the Child Protection Plan containing the sensitive details the same day and recovered it. The family whose child's details had been disclosed was told what happened by post. The plan was then updated. The recipients of the report were told the information they had seen was confidential, not to share it and there were ‘criminal implications’ if they did.

The trust, formally Birmingham Children's Services, which is owned by Birmingham City Council but ran independently, also reviewed other cases and found no other data breaches by the person in question. The organisation’s document template has been updated with an optional confidential section to prevent a similar breach from happening again.

The breach was also not found to have caused any actual harm, nor prejudiced the criminal investigation according to West Midlands Police. But the ICO said it placed the child whose data had been disclosed at risk of vigilantism, could have caused psychological harm, could have affected their mental health and relationships and caused a loss of confidence.

Get breaking news on BirminghamLive WhatsApp

Sally-Anne Poole, head of investigations at the ICO, said: “Children’s personal information requires extra protection and must be handled with great care. This disclosure of personal information by social workers at Birmingham Children's Trust Community Interest Company was a violation of privacy that would have caused distress to both the child and their family.

“We expect all organisations processing personal information to ensure they have robust policies and procedures in place to protect it. We will take action when personal information, especially belonging to children and young people, is compromised.”

Read more: Warning as city kids trafficked to Scotland - and every parent must know signs

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

It recommended that Birmingham Children's Trust Community Interest Company should take further steps to ensure its compliance with data protection law, including:

• Implement a more granular approach to data protection and create a Standard Operating Procedure with regard to producing social care documents;

• Include a process for any social care product to be independently checked by someone other than the author prior to disclosure and

• Create and implement a corporate redaction policy, which ensures staff have the knowledge and tools, to redact the product if necessary.

Read more: Child's 'blasé disclosure' to mum snared paedophile trucker

A spokesman for Birmingham Children’s Trust said: “We can confirm a data breach occurred affecting one person’s information which occurred in November 2022. The Trust self-reported this incident to the ICO at the time.

“The Trust takes the protection of the information we work with very seriously and we safely manage this information in the vast majority of cases. The ICO has issued a reprimand for this data breach where some sensitive information about one person was shared in error with another family.

“We have carefully considered the ICO recommendations and have taken steps to help prevent such an occurrence from happening again. We are continuing to monitor this area of activity, and we are also working on broader procedural changes to further help protect the personal data we work with.”