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This section provides an overview of the processing of your data for support, welfare and risk assessment purposes. The sections below provide more detailed information about processing of data for these purposes in some circumstances, e.g. in connection with particular course requirements or where you access certain support services from ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥.

General enquiries or support requests and queries about lost property are processed through the AskÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ service. This can be accessed either through face to face contact with staff on campus, by phone or on-line. The data you give to the AskÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ team will be used only to respond to your enquiry or request. When you contact AskÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ we may access parts of your student record on the SITS system to enable us to respond effectively to your enquiries and requests.

Information about enquiries you make and your use of student services (e.g. to obtain advice on finance or immigration issues or to make a complaint) may be stored in our SID system. Staff within the relevant student support service and Faculty programme support staff may be able to see that you have asked for support or made an enquiry. This enables staff to make appropriate referrals of further enquiries and may assist in providing advice on specific subjects. However only staff who provide a particular service will see the details of a support request/enquiry, and sensitive enquiries (e.g. about health and wellbeing) will not be visible to staff outside the relevant specialist team.

During your time at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, staff will process information about your personal and family circumstances, academic and extra-curricular interests and academic performance and progression where this is necessary to provide you with appropriate pastoral care and support in the context of your studies at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. We also process this type of information where we have concerns about your ability to continue with your studies at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ for health reasons or to safeguard you or others from potential harm. We also process this type of information in the context of our Global Talent Programme: further information about this will be provided if you become involved in this Programme.

The data we process for these purposes will include information you have given us about any health conditions or disabilities affecting your life and study at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, and any other special category data you have provided to us which is relevant. This may also include processing any information given to us by third parties, e.g. expressions of concern about your wellbeing or information about any risks of harm to yourself or others.

Prior to on-line registration we asked you to tell us about any disabilities, health conditions, learning support needs or other support needs which might be relevant to your life at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. We ask for this information so that we can assess the range of support you may need and put appropriate adjustments in place where possible. Further information about how we use this information is set out below and in our policy (3D: Admissions Policy and Procedure for Applicants with a Disability, Medical Condition or Other Support Need). You do not have to give us this information, but we are only able to make adjustments for you and put support in place if you provide us with full and accurate information.

Where your application to ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ indicates that you are a care leaver, we will contact you before the start of the academic year to invite you to a care-leaver specific event designed to give you additional support in preparing to start your studies at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, and to put you in touch with our Student Support staff who provide support specifically for care leavers. We will also send you information about Care Leaver Bursaries, and share information with our Accommodation Services team to ensure you are given the appropriate priority in allocation of accommodation, in accordance with the Care Leavers accommodation guarantee.

Where you tell us during the admissions process and/or during online registration that you are estranged from your family, we may contact you before the start of the academic year to provide information about support available to you. We may also send you further emails about available support during the academic year, unless you ask us to stop these communications.

We will process information about any matters on your criminal record which you notify to us in accordance with our processes, when you accept an offer to study at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ or subsequently. We use this information to carry out risk assessments which consider whether your record will affect your suitability for your course, any potential risks to others which would arise from your study at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, and whether or how any such difficulties or risks may be appropriately and effectively managed.

• Necessary for the performance of the contract between you and ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥

• Necessary for performance of ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s core public task, i.e. delivery of higher education and research, which includes providing a safe learning and teaching environment and supporting you in your studies

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest [Safeguarding students under 18 and vulnerable students over 18]

• Consent: you have agreed to this processing

• Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person

• Necessary for legitimate interests pursued by ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, i.e. support of care leavers

If you have a condition, disability or support need which may mean that you require additional support with learning or other adjustments by ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, we ask you to register with ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s Additional Learning Support service (ALS). Additional Learning Support works with you to assess the range of support you may need and put appropriate adjustments in place where possible. This includes supporting other student services by helping to assess the impact of conditions and disabilities on other aspects of your experience at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ e.g. accommodation. The service also manages the delivery of learning support. With your agreement we will process your personal data, including information about relevant health conditions or disabilities, for the purposes of providing this service. We will collect this data from you and from third parties such as professionals who assess your support requirements.

Additional Learning Support will need to share some of your disability-related information with ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ staff and external examiners, so that appropriate support and adjustments can be provided to you in relation to teaching, learning and assessment, and provision of accommodation. We may also need to share information with external auditors of Disabled Students Allowance funding. With your permission we may share your information with other third parties, for the purposes of assessing and meeting support requirements.

We use the information you provide to assess your needs, determine the support which can be provided to you, determine eligibility for public funding for the cost of that support, provide the support to you and process any payment required for the support. We do this only with your agreement and on the basis that it is necessary to enable us to provide the Additional Learning Support service.

We use information about you provided by you at application stage as described in our Student Recruitment & Admissions Privacy Notice. We collect more detailed information from you later through registration with the Additional Learning Support service and further discussions with you. We will also collect information about you from third parties, e.g. where they are asked to provide relevant assessments: you will be involved in these processes.

Detailed information about your conditions or disabilities will only be accessible to staff within ALS. However, to provide ALS services we will need to share some information with ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ staff and external examiners who carry out teaching, learning support, administration or assessment activities on your course. We will discuss with you whether/to what extent we will share information about your disability, the impact of your disability on you and your studies and the adjustments which need to be made for you. With your permission we may share your information with third parties, such as educational psychologists, (healthcare) placement providers, funding bodies or equipment providers. If you receive Disabled Students’ Allowance, some of your ALS information may also need to be shared with external auditors.

For students applying for or living in ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥-allocated accommodation, information about your support requirements may also need to be shared between ALS, ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s Residential Services team and external accommodation providers for the purposes of providing you with access to suitable accommodation and support. ALS may also process information about any disabilities you have, to assess your eligibility for ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ parking permits on behalf of our Estates department.

• Consent: you have agreed to this processing

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: auditing of public funding [this relates to sharing with DSA-QAG (the Disabled Students Allowance Quality Assurance Group) information about students receiving Disability Support Allowance & DfE-ESFA (The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) is an executive agency of the Department of Education (DfE)) in relation to ALS]

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest

Where your course requires you to undertake work placements within healthcare and social care settings, before the start of the course you must undergo an occupational health assessment to ensure you meet vaccination requirements, and to identify any risks or issues which may affect your ability to complete the placement and any needs you have for specific support in your placement, e.g. due to health conditions or disability. We may also need to carry out additional risk assessments in relation to specific conditions or infections, this applies to professional healthcare programmes of study within our Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. Your personal data will be shared as necessary with the University’s supplier of student occupational health services (currently Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust). This will take place once you have accepted an offer to study at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. Outcomes from this assessment process may be shared with ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ if they are relevant to your suitability to take up your offer of study at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. Further information will be given to you when we make the referral to the service.

Within the occupational health services provider, data relating to your health conditions or disabilities is processed only by healthcare professionals who are subject to professional obligations of confidentiality.

• Necessary for performance of ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s core public task, i.e. delivery of higher  education and research

• Necessary for healthcare purposes, including assessment of working capacity, medical diagnosis, provision of treatment or the management of healthcare arrangements.

• Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person, i.e. to prevent or manage significant risks of harm 

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest: safeguarding vulnerable people

We will process your data as necessary for the purposes of ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s Health, Wellbeing and Support to Study Policy and Procedure. This applies where ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ staff have significant concerns about your behaviours, attitude or ability to undertake your course or elements of your course, and where we believe that this is related to underlying health conditions or disability or that otherwise it would not be appropriate to use the Student Disciplinary Procedure in response to these concerns. This may include processing special category data about health conditions and disabilities which you provide to us for the purposes of this process or which you have previously provided to us for other purposes. Information processed within this ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ process may subsequently be shared with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) if you refer your case to the OIA for a review.

• Necessary for the performance of the contract between you and ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, i.e. the Student Agreement

• Necessary for performance of ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s core public task, i.e. delivery of higher education and research and safeguarding students

• Necessary for legitimate interests pursued by ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, i.e. compliance with the OIA process

• Consent: you have agreed to this processing

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest: safeguarding vulnerable people

We ask you to tell us about any disabilities or health conditions which may have implications for your or others’ health & safety while you are at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. This would include any disability or condition which may affect your ability to undertake particular activities safely. We will not know this information or be able to help you manage risks unless you tell us. We give you an opportunity to provide this information in the myHub action we ask you to complete before enrolment. If your course involves activities for which a health and safety risk assessment is required (such as field trips, laboratory work or workshop activities involving use of machinery), we need to ask you specific questions about health conditions, disabilities and support needs in order to identify and manage any particular risks to you and others within these environments.

If you provide this type of information, with your agreement we will work with you to assess your disability/condition and its potential impact, and agree any health & safety action plan needed to manage risks to you and others or any other wellbeing or support plan you wish to put in place.

If your course involves activities such as field work, laboratory work or use of workshop machinery, we need to know about relevant conditions or support needs so that we can manage health and safety risks to you and others. If you are not on a course of this type you do not have to provide us with this information. However this will usually affect our ability to provide you with support in managing the impact of your condition/disability.

• Explicit consent: we only process this information with your specific agreement

• Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person, i.e. to prevent or manage significant risks of harm

There may be times where we ask you to contact AskÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ to let us know if you have a contagious (infectious) disease. We will use this information to consider your welfare and the support available, potential impact on your studies and identify any steps we should take to help ensure a safe environment for staff and other students. These might include a further risk assessment of activities and notifying students and/or staff that they have been in contact with someone who has tested positive. We may inform your Faculty Programme Support Team and relevant Student Support Teams within Student Services so you situation can be considered. We may share your information with your accommodation provider (although we will also ask you to notify the accommodation provider direct) so that they are able to offer you support and take any action required to safeguard you and others. In some circumstances, ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ may seek assistance from third-party charitable organisations to help provide practical support to students who are self-isolating/in quarantine. In rare circumstances we may be required to share the information with the relevant. public health authorities. Further information from ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ on Contagious diseases can be found here.

• Necessary for the performance of our public task as a university, which includes providing a safe learning and teaching environment and supporting you in your studies; 

Throughout your time at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ you may share with ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ staff information about your health or welfare, or matters affecting your health or welfare. This might include your Personal Tutor or supervisor, other Faculty staff, a ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ student welfare advisor or other staff involved in providing student services. Where this happens, the staff member will usually let you know on a case by case basis what they will do with the information, including whether they think need to share any of it within ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ or with third parties. They will normally give you the opportunity to agree or object. For example, if you share information with your Personal Tutor they may ask if you are happy for them to contact staff within the Student Wellbeing team in ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ Student Services.

If we refer you to an external health or wellbeing service (whether this is a service commissioned by ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥, such as the Student Wellbeing service, or an NHS service), we will usually agree this with you. After the referral is made, the external service will collect further information directly from you and will be responsible for how that information is processed and held.

Occasionally we may decide that we need to process certain information about you without relying on your consent: for example, because the processing is necessary to protect your or another person’s vital interest, to safeguard the welfare of you or someone else or to comply with our legal obligations.

Sometimes a third party will share information about your health or welfare with us because they are worried about you. When this happens, we will consider what action, if any, we will take in response to the information. We will decide whether we need to tell you about the information and our response or whether the situation means that this would not be necessary or appropriate.

• Consent: you have agreed to this processing

• Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person, i.e. to prevent or manage significant risks of harm

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest: safeguarding vulnerable people

This service provides counselling and other support in respect of wellbeing issues and mental health or distress. If you wish to access this support, with your agreement ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ student support staff will process your data in order to refer you to the service, which is provided by Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust (an NHS organisation separate to ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥) under a contract with ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. If you access the wellbeing service you will be given further privacy information about the use of your data.

A wellbeing service for ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ students is provided by Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust (an NHS organisation separate to ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥). This service is provided under a contract between ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ and the Trust. If you wish to access this service, the ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ student support team will use your data to refer you to this service. Following referral, with your agreement your data (including information about any relevant health conditions or disabilities) will be shared with and processed by the wellbeing service. You will be given further information about this processing, and asked to sign a form consenting to the use of your information, when you are referred to the service.

Within the wellbeing service your information will be processed only by healthcare professionals who are subject to professional obligations of confidentiality.

• Consent: you have agreed to this processing

ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ requires offer-holders and students to disclose information about criminal records matters as follows:

• If you are accepting an offer from ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ on certain health & social care and Sports Therapy courses which include mandatory practice learning placements in the regulated professional environment: we require you to declare and provide details of any matters on your record which would be disclosed through an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service check. We also ask you to complete an Enhanced DBS check, either immediately after you have declared matters on your record or, if you did not declare anything, before enrolment. We use this information to assess your suitability for your chosen course/profession and your ability to meet the course requirements to complete work placements in the regulated professional environment. For further information see our Admissions  on criminal records declarations for regulated professions courses.

• ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ uses a third-party organisation to administer Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks on our behalf. ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ shares limited personal details with the third-party organisation as part of this process. For further information see our Student Recruitment and Admissions Privacy Notice.

• Everyone accepting an offer to study at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ is asked to declare certain relevant unspent criminal convictions (as defined in our ). We ask you to give us this information so that we can assess and manage any risks arising from the conviction in the context of the University environment.

The requirement to declare these matters to ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ is on-going. This means that you are also required to disclose any matters within these descriptions (where applicable) which are imposed on you at a later date, after the point at which the declaration was first required -whether before or after enrolment at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥.

If you wish to undertake a voluntary work placement (i.e. a work placement option which is not a mandatory course requirement) which involves regulated activity with children or vulnerable adults, you will need to go through an Enhanced DBS check before the placement is confirmed.

We will disclose to the Disclosure & Barring Service information about any conviction or caution you receive which is relevant to the DBS function of protecting children and vulnerable adults.

We ask about spent convictions and other criminal matters in relation to regulated professions courses because the purposes for which we use this information make our question exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

Information about your criminal record is only processed or shared within ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ as necessary to carry out the risk assessment processes as described in our Admissions

Policy and Procedure for Applicants with a Criminal Record (3E) and to complete any risk control actions identified in risk assessments. Where that assessment is carried out by a ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ Panel (Disclosure Panel or Criminal Conviction Panel), information is given to Panels in anonymised (no-names) form.

Where risk assessment results in a decision that we need to pass some information about your record and our risk assessment in identifiable form to individuals within ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ or at third party organisations (e.g. accommodation provider), we will tell you before this happens.

Otherwise information about criminal records which is collected before you start your course at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ will not be further processed or shared within ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ unless this is necessary to manage any issue which arises in connection with the accuracy of previous declarations made to ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ or in connection with any later concerns/additional criminal matters arising.

If you have made the required declaration when accepting an offer but you subsequently receive a relevant criminal conviction or other matter (i.e. a matter that you would have been required to declare at the earlier stage), you need to notify ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. In addition, during enrolment at the start of each academic year you will be asked to confirm whether there are any changes you need to make to your previous declaration(s) regarding relevant criminal convictions or other matters. Any information provided in these declarations will be processed in the same way and for the same purposes as the original declarations required, and we will disclose it to the Disclosure & Barring Service if it is relevant to its statutory functions of protection children and vulnerable adults.

Further information about ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥â€™s processing of students’ criminal records information is set out in our policy (available in the Important Information section on the ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ website).

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: this refers to the University’s role in supporting the regulation of health and social care professions by assessing the suitability of applicants to courses leading to those professions, its task of providing education in accordance with its own regulatory requirements and the wider duty of the University, professional regulators and the Disclosure & Barring Service to safeguard people within the University environment and people in the health and social care practice learning environment.

We can only process this type of information where it falls into one or more of the paragraphs in Schedule 1 to the UK Data Protection Act 2018. The relevant paragraphs are:

• Regulated professions courses:
  • Paragraph 6: necessary for the exercise of a function conferred by law: this refers to the University’s need to comply with regulatory requirements set by the Office for Students, in particular regulatory conditions B1 and B2
  • Paragraph 18: necessary for the purposes of safeguarding, i.e. protecting  individuals from risks of neglect, harm or damage to well-being
  • Paragraph 11: necessary for the exercise of a function intended to protect members of the public against seriously improper conduct, unfitness etc.

• Other courses:
  • Paragraph 10: necessary for the purposes of prevention or detection of unlawful acts
  • Paragraph 18: safeguarding,  as above

ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ Student Services provide advice to students on sources of financial support from UK funding providers e.g. SFE and the NHS Learning Support Fund and administer applications for additional financial support. We will make and retain notes of the advice we’ve given to you within our SID system and Outlook. If you apply for additional financial support, you will usually do this using the MyCareerHub system. We will keep your completed application forms, our calculations of eligibility for financial support and a record of the award for seven years, but documentation you provide in support of your application will be kept only until the end of the academic year in which you make the applications

• Necessary for the performance of a contract between you and ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: providing support to students to enable them to access higher education

• Necessary for legitimate interests pursued by ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥: providing support to students to enable them to access higher education

• Consent: you have explicitly agreed that we can use your personal data for this purpose – this applies to any special category data shared with us

ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ Student Services Immigration Advice and Compliance Team can provide support and assistance to future students (those who have received an offer from ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥) and students and their dependants with regard to their immigration status and visa applications. This may be provided through webinars, email and one to one appointments. This service is regulated by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), which may access information for the purposes of auditing compliance with their standards and requirements. We retain records of advice given to individuals for six years, in accordance with OISC requirements. Information you give us when using this service may be disclosed as described in the Immigration Compliance section of this Notice.

• Necessary for the performance of a contract between you and ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: providing support to students to enable them to access higher education

• Necessary for legitimate interests pursued by ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥: providing support to students to enable them to access higher education

• Consent: you have explicitly agreed that we can use your personal data for this purpose – this applies to any special category data shared with us