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The Best Start in Life - Link Between Parent Infant Relationship and Infant Feeding Research and Insight Programme privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and it was last updated on 15 April 2026.

Kent County Council (KCC) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Who we are

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

This programme is about research and insight gathering with families and individuals in Kent to explore the links between infant feeding, parent infant relationships and perinatal mental health.

The purpose of this work is to gain a better understanding of national evidence and the experiences of families in Kent to inform practice and interactions between the workforce and the families we serve. Findings will help professionals (health visitors and midwifery and Family Hub teams) to observe interactions with the families they work with and ask relatable questions which consider the interface between infant feeding, perinatal mental health and parent infant relationships.

The programme will involve working with families in Kent to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences and choices around infant feeding, their relationship with their infant, how they impact each other, and the impacts on the physical and emotional experiences of both parent and infant.

Works for All Ltd will recruit individuals and families in Kent to participate in the insight research.

We will develop insight research open ended questions (prompts) and co-produce these with a focus group and families in Kent. Question themes will be related to infant feeding, choice, birth, bonding, emotions and mental health and wellbeing. These questions will be designed with families to extract the experience from a range of families and individuals including mums, dads, partners, co-parents, and carers.

The co-produced questions and prompts will be adapted for a range of needs and use wording which is easily understood and culturally sensitive.

Insight participants

Individuals and families who have a baby/infant up to the age of two:

  • mums
  • dads
  • new parents
  • co-parents
  • partners
  • carers (to include family members and wider support who play a vital role in supporting infant feeding, and parent infant relationships and supporting family's mental health).

Who:

  • breast fed or breast feed
  • formula fed or formula feed
  • use or have used a combination of both breast and formula feeding
  • have or plan to switch from breast to bottle or formula feeding
  • have a new baby and continue to breast or bottle feed an older infant
  • have or plan to start to introduce solid foods
  • have an infant over one year mainly eating solid foods who continues to take breast milk which is no longer the main nutrition for them
  • small number of individuals and families who have a new baby and continue to breast, or bottle feed an older infant, to understand the experience in terms feelings and relationship of both the children and the parents, and any changes experienced with two infants, not necessarily twins.

The overall anticipated number of participants across Kent the programme aims to reach is between 150 to 200. The programme will build trust through open and transparent conversations, in safe and confidential spaces.

The focus will be through qualitative interviews and focus groups to bring out the depth of narrative and understanding of families lived experiences.

The personal information we collect and use

Works for All Ltd will handle the data on our behalf.

Participants and families will be provided with clear and concise information which will include asking participants to freely opt-in to a specific statement of consent for personal data to be captured, processed and shared. This will include a participant’s right to withdraw consent at any time.

In the course of delivering the research and insight programme with families in Kent we will collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • Adult participant’s name.
  • Contact details (email address, phone number).
  • First 4 characters of postcode.
  • Age range (including of parent and infant).

We will also collect the following personal data, which is special category data, more sensitive and is treated with extra care and protection:

  • Racial/ethnic origin.

Through conversations with us, you may wish to share information about topics like:

  • cultural and family expectations
  • parent and infant relationship and bonding information
  • perinatal mental health and wellbeing experiences
  • confidence in infant feeding.

Within these conversations, you may disclose to us information that is considered special category data and therefore we will treat this data with extra care and protection.

Your name and contact details will be stored separately from all other information we obtain about you, so that it will not be possible to link your name and contact details with any of the other information that you share with us.

Works for All Ltd will design and deliver an interactive webinar training programme for health professionals in Kent - Health visiting and Midwifery teams and Family Hub roles. The webinars will use short audio excerpts or voiceover readings of anonymised transcripts segments, sometimes paired with non-identifying visuals such as stock footage or separately recorded imagery. We will ensure you cannot be identified. This is to help health professionals understand the experiences of the individuals and families who participated and contributed to the findings, with insight participants written consent. Participants can freely opt in to use and retain the right to withdraw at any point, at which time any audio excerpts or materials derived from your contribution will not be used and will be deleted.

We will record a presentation with slides and graphs which will be made available post April 2026 for up to 2 years for Kent health and social care professionals to access to support professional development. This recorded presentation will be retained from May 2026 and 6 years after this time will be securely disposed.

The insight programmes model is to build trust with open and transparent conversations with families, allowing choice and control over how parents engage with the programme and how and what parents share about their experiences.

We will co-produce the final design, structure and presentation of the translation of the voice of families into a format that can be shared at webinar training, treating the participants/families as trusted peers with unique skills and perspectives.

At the end of the programme, a report and a co-created infographic will be produced summarising key points from the engagement and research and which translates the insights you have shared with us into themes and considerations to help us better understand the links between infant feeding, parent infant relationship and perinatal mental health in Kent. This will include your anonymised personal data on ethnicity, age range and location, with some graphs and tables.

This will be shared with our Public Health consultants and specialists who lead the perinatal mental health and infant feeding Best Start for Life programme in Kent, along with information collected by us.

Demographic, infant feeding profile data and recordings will be anonymised at the earliest opportunity with identifiable data held separately.

We will not obtain personal or special category data from any other sources.

Webinar training programme for health professionals in Kent

In the course of delivering the webinar training programme we will collect the following personal information from webinar attendees when you provide it to us:

  • Personal information such as name and contact details (work email address).
  • Role and team (such as health visitors, midwives and Family Hub teams in Kent).

A commissioned creative supplier will design a small number of illustrations and a script from the insights which will be co-produced with the families participating in the insight programme. These illustrations will give families the language through conversation points to raise any feelings or concerns and confidence to engage in early support in a way that meets their needs. Illustrations will not identify individuals or families.

Health and social care professionals will use the illustrations as a dialogue prompt tool to support positive and effective key conversations between health professionals and families to help you express feelings, experiences and concerns in health appointments.

How we use your personal information

We will use your personal information to:

  • know we have captured insights from a wide range of families with different experiences, to gain a deeper understanding and to identify patterns and trends as a foundation for analysis and to provide actionable understanding that guides decisions
  • obtain data and insights which will help to inform health visitors, midwives and Family Hub teams’ professional practice, delivered through four webinar training sessions
  • inform future service provision and commissioning of services.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

When we collect or share your personal data, we rely on the following legal basis:

  • Article 6(1)(a) - Consent: the individual has given clear consent to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

When we collect your 'special categories of personal data' (such as any health information), we rely on the following legal bases:

  • Article 9(2)(a) - Explicit consent: the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes, except where domestic law provides that the prohibition referred to in paragraph 1 may not be lifted by the data subject.
  • Article 9(2)(i) - Processing is necessary for reasons of public interests in the area of public health.

We rely on the Public Health condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(i) to process your special category data.

We take the following appropriate safeguards in respect of your special category data when relying on the conditions above:

  • We maintain a record of our processing in our ‘Record of Processing Activities’ and record for any reasons deviating from the periods in our retention schedule.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your personal and special category information securely by data processor and retain it until the programme is completed. Identifiable personal data will be retained only as long as necessary to deliver, verify and report the programme findings. Works for All Ltd will delete identifiable personal data collected for the purposes of the research and insight programme by 30 April 2026 and webinar attendee data will be deleted by 31 May 2026. Works for All Ltd will provide evidence of deletion to us at the end of the programme.

We may keep anonymised data (which cannot identify you) for up to 5 years where we have a specific use for it, such as providing examples for educational purposes.

Who we share your anonymised data with

Your anonymised special category data will be shared in the format of an end of programme report and an infographic (an infographic is one page visual which has key points and shows information such as data as creative icons, charts and text) with:

  • teams within KCC working to improve outcomes for children and families
  • commissioned providers of local authority services such as the Health Visitor service
  • partner organisations signed up to the Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement, where necessary, which may include health visitors, midwives
  • Department for Education who funds this programme.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

  • know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
  • ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
  • ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
  • object to direct marketing
  • make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

  • object to how we are using your information
  • ask us to delete information we hold about you
  • have your information transferred electronically to you or to another organisation
  • object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
  • stop us using your information in certain ways.

We will always seek to comply with your request. However, we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise a right, contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk.

Your right to withdraw your consent

Where we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you can withdraw your consent to our use of your data at any time.

To do this email the data processor Works For All Ltd via consent@worksforall.org . Works For All Ltd will notify us if you have withdrawn your consent.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Who to contact

Contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk.

UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with Information Commissioner, who may be contacted via the Information Commissioner's website or call 03031 231113.

Read our corporate privacy statement.