Privacy notice: annual social worker survey

Data

Social Work England will process your responses to the social worker survey questions and metadata about how you complete the survey.

This includes:

• any responses given to attitudinal questions that ask you about your experiences at work
• open-ended questions where you leave a comment
• any responses given to demographic questions that ask about your job characteristics (sector type and region of your work)
• completion times for survey.

Your participation is voluntary.

While we do not ask you to identify yourself, it may be possible in a small number of cases for individuals to be identifiable from a combination of their responses. There is also the potential that despite our request not to, individuals may in error disclose personal data in the free text boxes. For this reason we treat confidence survey data as personal data.

Purpose

The purpose for which we are processing your personal data is to help leaders take action in raising the standards of social work and building trust and confidence in the social work profession and in our regulation of the social work profession. By running this survey, we are able to compare social worker views and experiences across England.

Lawful basis

Our lawful basis for processing your personal data in relation to this survey is Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, ‘processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller’.

Recipients

All individual-level responses to the annual social worker survey will be seen by our data and analysis function. We may disclose your data in compliance with a Freedom of Information request or in response to a court order or other legal obligation where it would not breach your data protection rights to do so.

Your answers are anonymous and results will be aggregated. We advise you not to disclose any personal information in your comment which might identify yourself or others.

Retention

Social Work England will hold your data for statistical purposes for 6 years after the date the survey is completed (there is regularly the requirement to do time series analysis), at which point retention will be reviewed. If the data are no longer in use at this point, they will be deleted; if they are still in use, they will be retained, but their retention will (from then on) be reviewed on an annual basis.

Your data will be held by our survey supplier for up to 24 months after the date the survey is completed, or when asked by us to delete it.

Aggregate results from the annual social worker survey do not count as personal data and will therefore be kept indefinitely, or until they are no longer considered useful.

Your rights

All data received through the annual social worker survey is classed as personal data even though it is provided anonymously. That is because in certain circumstances certain individuals may be identifiable through their sector type, region of work and comments.

It should be made clear that there is no intention to attempt to identify any individuals from the data. Precautions are also in place to prevent this, however for data protection purposes the survey information is being treated with the same requirements as identifiable data.

The data collected as part of the survey is done so in an anonymised format. This does limit your data protection rights to the information provided in your survey response.

Use of emerging technologies

Once the survey has closed Social Work England will analyse the responses provided. As part of this analysis we may use automated tools, including large language models and machine learning models. We will use these tools to support the analysis of survey responses, and all analysis will take place with human input and review. Though the survey is anonymous, we will review survey responses to remove any identifiable information included in responses by survey participants, prior to using these tools.

Complaints

If you consider your personal data has been misused or mishandled, please contact our Data Protection and Information Governance Team at [email protected].

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who are an independent regulator. Details of how to contact the ICO can be found here https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

We are committed to providing the best service we can in all the interactions we have with all those who use our services.

If you have any feedback about this survey, or want to tell us where we could have done better, we want to hear from you. Your feedback, including complaints, will help us to learn from our mistakes and from what we’ve done well to improve the quality of our services.

You can complete a feedback form at the following link: https://www.socialworkengland.org.uk/about/feedback-and-complaints/#about/  

Contact details

Social Work England are the data controller for your data. If you have any further questions, please email the Social Work England policy team by emailing [email protected]