I am only going to link at the foot of this post to the recent judgment in the Family Court, as it is long, contains distressing and graphic references to alleged sexual offences and how a school and a local authority dealt with the allegations and only deals in passing with the issue I raise in this post. Please be aware of that.
However, the issue is of real importance.
The reason for referring to it is the extraordinary, and extraordinarily worrying, references in the judgment to a discussion a deputy head teacher had with the nine year old child in question. The judgment records the teacher’s evidence that, although
she took notes of the discussion she destroyed any notes that she had made. This appeared to be in accordance with a school-wide misunderstanding of data protection guidance. She fairly admitted that after a year she could only guess at those notes now
The judge stresses that she
“[does] not criticise GG – she was a caring and conscientious teacher who was doing her best and believed she was following advice and good practice. She lacked specialist training and some of the advice was unhelpful. I have carefully considered the problems with her record of this discussion, and I am mindful that these challenges add to the difficulty of appraising the reliability of what she recorded.”
[nb, this was said not solely in the context of the destruction of the notes]
The London Borough involved recognised, during the course of the proceedings, “the importance of addressing a wide range of gaps and concerns that emerged during the course of this hearing”, and the judge invited the parties to draw up an agreed list of issues for the Council to consider and provide a response to as a positive problem-solving exercise. Among these agreed issues was this
“Contemporaneous notes need to be taken when a child makes any allegation of physical, sexual or emotional abuse against a third party…. It needs to be made clear within the policy that contemporaneous notes ought to be kept and stored securely (electronically if possible). This includes any handwritten notes even if, only key words are noted down and later entered onto any electronic system. THIS DOES NOT INFRINGE GDPR.”
Those final words resound, even if they shouldn’t need saying.
Prior to GDPR, there were certainly a multitude of misunderstandings about data protection, but the idea that personal data should not be recorded, or should be quickly destroyed, is one of the most pernicious of misunderstandings that seems to have emerged since GDPR – in part from terrible advice and training given by people who shouldn’t have ever been engaged to train the public sector. I implore those involved in training and advising in these complex areas of social care and education to consider the import and impact of the advice they give.
Finally, the importance and meaning of the first word of the third data protection principle is often overlooked. Yes, it’s the “data minimisation” principle, but personal data must still be adequate.
This is the judgment.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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