Privacy notice: Mothers’ Views of Mental Health Support / Evaluation of Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Services

This privacy notice explains how your personal data (e.g., any information that could identify you) collected for the purposes of this study are used and handled.

Why is this data being collected?

The survey of Mother’s Views of Mental Health Support, the Survey of Healthcare Staff (Evaluation of Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Services) and the in-depth interviews following on from both these surveys all contribute to a larger evaluation of Perinatal and Infant Mental Health services. Together these will explore:

understanding of risks to mental health during the perinatal period,
awareness, availability and accessibility of mental health support,
understandings of healthy infant development
the impact of recent changes to Perinatal and Infant Mental Health services
among women who have recently been pregnant and the healthcare staff who support them.

Who is the data controller?

Public Health Scotland is the “data controller”, which means that they decide what personal data is collected from you as part of this study. They will not be given access to data that can identify you. The Public Health Scotland website can be accessed here and you can view the Public Health Scotland’s privacy notice here.

You can contact Public Health Scotland’s Data Protection Officer using the details below:

Email: phs.dataprotection@phs.scot

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Address:

Data Protection Officer
Public Health Scotland
Gyle Square
1 South Gyle Crescent
Edinburgh
EH12 9EB

Who is the data processor?

The Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen) and its parent company, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), is the “data processor” for this study, which means that ScotCen/NatCen will be responsible for collecting information from you during the survey and follow-up telephone/video/face-to-face interviews (if you consent to this and are contacted), securely storing it and using it to write a report on behalf of Public Health Scotland.

What is the legal basis for processing this data?

The legal basis for collecting this information is ‘public task’ which means it is being collected to aid the functioning of government.

The legal basis used to process special category data, under Article 9(2) of GDPR is: 9(2)(j) processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1). The appropriate condition from the DPIA 2018 Schedule 1 Part 1 paragraph for is Condition 4. That is, that this processing:

(a)    is necessary for archiving purposes, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes,
(b)    is carried out in accordance with Article 89(1) of the GDPR (as supplemented by section 19), and
(c)    is in the public interest.

Your contact details

Your name and address were selected from birth registration records held by Public Health Scotland (PHS). Birth registration records are collected by National Records Scotland (NRS) but a copy of these records, containing a limited set of information, is shared with PHS. You were chosen at random amongst all women who registered a new birth between October 2022 and September 2023. Once selected, names and addresses were checked against your health records (known as the Community Health Index or ‘CHI’) to ensure they were accurate and up to date. Names and addresses of women who recently gave birth and registered that birth were then provided by PHS to ScotCen to permit the issuing of survey invitations by post. Without this information, it would not be possible to conduct the survey.

Additional information you provided at the birth registration which is held by PHS and has been shared with ScotCen includes your age range, pregnancy history, country of birth, employment status, and the child’s father’s age and employment status. This supplementary information will be used to look at the characteristics of mothers who have and have not completed the survey and to make adjustments to the data to improve its quality. Applying these adjustments to the data will ensure the findings are more robust and representative and thus of greater benefit to Public Health Scotland and the public generally. The information provided to us by PHS was the minimum amount required to produce a final survey dataset which is of good enough quality to answer the research questions and meet the aims and objectives of the study as a whole.

Information on what personal data is collected by PHS and how they use it is contained in their privacy notice, which can be accessed via this link: https://publichealthscotland.scot/our-privacy-notice/personal-data-collection/

The NRS website provides information on how they use the information you provide when registering a birth. You can access it via this link: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/registration

Use of the birth registration records for this research study was approved by the Health & Social Care Public Benefit and Privacy Panel of NHS Scotland.

What will happen to my data?

We will treat the information you give us in the strictest confidence under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). No one looking at the findings in the report will be able to identify you in any way. You will never receive any junk mail because of speaking to us. We will never pass on your details to other organisations for commercial purposes.

Your name and any personal data (such as gender and age) will be stored securely on ScotCen/NatCen’s servers, which are based in the UK. ScotCen/NatCen will not pass your personal details to anybody without your permission. Only the ScotCen/NatCen research team will have access to your personal data. No information that could make a person identifiable will be passed on to Public Health Scotland. Data from partially completed surveys will be stored and used in the same way as data from fully completed ones.

At ScotCen and NatCen we have a continuous programme of internal audits and undergo yearly formal external audits to ensure we continue to meet all the requirements of ISO27001 (the international standard for information security) and other international best practices.

At the end of the research study, Public Health Scotland (the ‘data controller’) will receive a cleaned, survey data file, in a format which means they cannot identify and survey participants. The data will be transferred via ScotCen’s browser-based secure file transfer service. This is situated on ScotCen’s own network and automatically encrypts any files transferred to a highly secure standard. PHS will use the data for quality control purposes. It may also be used for sub-analysis, but this will be strictly within the parameters of the agreed research question and the information provided to the participants.

Will any data processing be sub-contracted to a third-party?

All the data processing will be undertaken by ScotCen/NatCen. For the Mothers’ Views of Mental Health Support survey this will done with the support of a printer who will issue the invitation and reminder communications.

All sub-contractors working for ScotCen/NatCen come from our ‘Approved Supplier List’, which means that we have contracts and confidentiality agreements already in place with them. Your data will not be shared by our approved sub-contractors with anyone other than ScotCen/NatCen via a secure data transfer process.

What are my rights?

Taking part in this study is voluntary. You are free to withdraw at any time without consequence, and you do not have to answer any questions you do not want to.

Data protection legislation gives rights to individuals in respect of the personal data that organisations hold about them. These include the right to:

access a copy of the information an organisation holds about them
object to processing that is likely to cause or is causing damage or distress
prevent processing for direct marketing
have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed in certain circumstances; and
claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the legislation.

If you have questions about your personal data held by the data controller you can contact Public Health Scotland’s Data Protection Officer using the details above.

Will I have access to my data?

You can contact ScotCen by email (PNIMH@scotcen.org.uk) or telephone (0800 652 0401 / 0131 240 0210) to request that your personal data be deleted or updated, and we will let you know if this is possible or not.

Please note that it will not be possible to identify your responses and remove your data if you have not given the following:

Your name and contact details for the follow up telephone/video/in-person interview; or
Your reference number (survey of mothers only).

You have the right to access your personal data within the period that ScotCen holds it. Providing responses to this study is entirely voluntary. You have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal data at any time, although once data is analysed and aggregated, it is not possible to withdraw your data from the outputs. Any information you have provided prior to pressing stop will be retained for analysis and reporting purposes.

To exercise these rights, please contact ScotCen at dpo@natcen.ac.uk.

We will respond to all requests within one month.

Complaints

If you have concerns about how your personal data has been processed, you can contact Public Health Scotland’s Data Protection Officer using the details below: