Privacy and Cookie statement

Youth Service Privacy Notice

Lewisham Youth Service provides a variety of activities for children and young people aged 8-19 (up to 25 for those with Special Education Needs and Disabilities). These activities include sports, arts, crafts, cultural events, cooking, employment support, free and imaginative play, and street-based support such as mentoring. Our services are both open access and targeted. Targeted services involve themed group work and one-on-one support, while open access services are available at youth centres and adventure playgrounds across the borough, typically delivered on two to three afternoon and evening sessions per week at each centre.

Information We Collect

We may collect the following information from you:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Email address
  • Telephone number (for both the young person and a parent/guardian)
  • School/education provision (if under 16 years old), including eligibility for free school meals
  • Date of birth
  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Registration of attendance at youth club sessions
  • Medical or health conditions, including disabilities and allergies requiring reasonable adjustments
  • Relevant assessments (e.g., early help assessments, team around the family minutes, educational health care plans)
  • Additional needs and diagnoses (e.g., mental health, special educational needs, communication and social needs, disabilities)
  • Services working with the family (both current and historical to avoid duplicating support)
  • Financial information (if relevant to the family's request for support)
  • Details of doctor’s surgery
  • Education/employment status (for those aged 16 and over)
  • Interests and hobbies
  • Goals for achievement through service provision
  • Additional needs

We use a Membership Form to collect this data, which is then uploaded into Views, a fully GDPR-compliant data management system managed by Substance. You can find data protection policies for Substance on their website.

Sharing Information

We collaborate with various services and organisations that may already be familiar with the child, young person, and family. When it is beneficial to share information with other services, we seek consent from the parent/carer. If there are safeguarding concerns, we will share information with relevant agencies, including the police and Children's Social Care.

Withdrawing Consent

The information you provide to Lewisham Youth Service will only be shared with your permission. If a child or young person receives targeted support from Lewisham Youth Service, we may share their information with relevant services to ensure they receive appropriate support. You can withdraw consent at any time during the intervention by speaking with your Youth Worker or contacting Lewisham Youth Service at lys@lewisham.gov.uk.

Understanding how and why we use cookies

We use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your experience of our site. One of the cookies is essential for the operation of the site and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site but parts of it may not work. You can find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them below.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer or device when you visit a website and are used by all websites and have different functions. At a basic level cookies will:

  • Allow the site to work properly, and help keep it secure.
  • Help us understand how people use the website.
  • Make the site easier to use by remembering information that you've entered,
  • Improve your experience by showing you information that's relevant to you.

Our Cookies

The cookies we use let our sites do the following:

eMag Cookie - Type: eMag Cookie Acceptance Cookie Name: AcceptCookies Description: This cookie is used to record if the user has accepted cookies from the site. It is retained for a period of 1 year.

ASP.NET Session Id - cookie name: ASP.NET_SessionId Description: This cookie is essential for the operation of the site. It is set by the .NET framework to record the users current session between page requests. It does not contain any personally identifiable information and is deleted when the user closes the browser. 

Polls - Cookie Name: Poll[n] Description: This cookie records which polls have been voted on during a visit to the site. It records a value indicating an option was selected and does not record any personally identifiable data. The cookie is retained for a period of 2 months.

Types of Cookie

Session Cookies

Session Cookies are temporary Cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the site. This information is not stored after you have left the site.

Persistent cookies

Persistent Cookies remain in your browser for much longer (though how long will depend on the lifetime of the specific cookie but this may be indefinitely or until deleted).

Third party cookies 

Third party cookies are cookies stored in your browser by third party websites which may be used to provide additional services to you via our website.

Third party sites

Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics is one such third party website which sets a cookie in order to evaluate your use of websites. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information is then used to evaluate visitor’s use of the website and to compile statistical reports on site activity for us.

We may use services such as YouTube for embedding our video content into our website. Information on how YouTube, and other common third party websites use cookies can be found on their respective websites: 

How to control and delete cookies 

We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our site, you can do this through your browser settings.

For more information on how to control and delete cookies, you may wish to visit About Cookies which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of web browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may cause our website to work incorrectly.

If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.

For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.

How to disable cookies 

You can stop cookies being downloaded on to your computer by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this site.

There is more information about cookies, including how to delete them on the website About Cookies. For more information on the cookie set by Google Analytics please go see Google's privacy policy. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites please go to Google's opt out page.