Social Services and Facebook

Kent County Council did not have the information requested.

Dear Kent County Council,

Please tell me if Kent County Council approves of Social Workers snooping through Facebook and other social networking sites, in order to find out what service users are doing, if so:

1) Can anything they find be 'used' to keep children on the child protection plan

2) How many hours are spent on this practise?

3) How much does it cost in man hours to do this?

4) How many children who are really suffering, have been missed while these hours are being used on the Internet

Yours faithfully,

sandy Joyce

Kent County Council

Dear Ms Joyce

 

Thank you for your email below.

 

Kent County Council acknowledges your request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Assuming KCC holds this information, we
will endeavour to supply the data to you as soon as possible but no later
than 12 April 2012 (20 working days from date of receipt).

 

We will advise you as soon as possible if we do not hold this information
or if there are exemptions to be considered and/or any costs for providing
the information. Please quote our reference - FOI/12/0385 - in any
communication regarding this particular request.

 

Best regards

 

James Mercer
Information Access Officer
Information Resilience & Transparency Team
Business Strategy & Support, Governance & Law
Kent County Council, Room 2.71, Sessions House, County Road, Maidstone,
ME14 1XQ. 
Telephone: 01622 221037, Internal: 7000 1037, Fax: 01622 696075
[1]http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/cont...

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Kent County Council

Dear Ms Joyce
 
Thank you for your request for information. I have embedded Kent County
Council's response within your original request below.
 
1) Can anything they find be 'used' to keep children on the
child protection plan, 2) How many hours are spent on this practise? and
3) How much does it cost in man hours to do this?
 
Kent County Council does not encourage its staff to search service users
on social networking websites unless there are exceptional circumstances.
To locate, extract and collate this information would involve us
approaching every social worker who would then need to search case
files to establish if a search has ever been completed, how long it took
and to what cost. This would take in excess of 18 hours work, which at £25
hourly rate set by the Ministry of Justice, would exceed the £450 cost
limit. Therefore, under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000,
we are not obliged to comply with this element of your request.  
 
4) How many children who are really suffering, have been missed while
these hours are being used on the Internet? I can confirm that Kent County
Council does not hold this information.
 

If you are unhappy with this response, and believe KCC has not complied
with legislation, please ask for a review by following our complaints
process; details can be found at this link
http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/have...
on our website. Please quote reference FOI/12/0385.     

 

If you still remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you can
appeal to the Information Commissioner, who oversees compliance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Details of what you need to do, should
you wish to pursue this course of action, are available from the
Information Commissioner s website
[1]http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/freedom....

 

Best regards

 

Laura Crawford
Information Access Officer
Information Resilience & Transparency Team
Business Strategy & Support, Governance & Law
Kent County Council, Room 2.71, Sessions House, County Road, Maidstone,
ME14 1XQ. 
Telephone: 01622 694261, Internal: 7000 4261, Fax: 01622 696075
[2]http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/cont...

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Dear Kent County Council,

Please tell me what you would consider to be an exceptional circumstance?

For example,
1) if a child was in danger of being exposed to a paedophile
2) had run away
3) was missing
would they be exceptional circumstances?

1) If siblings in care had managed to locate each other and were speaking via facebook, but not meeting up
2) if a social worker wanted to see whether a parent was speaking to their ex partner
3) or wanted to see what photos they had of their children (ordinary photos, nothing explicit)
4) or if a social worker went out of their way to look a service user up, without any reason to believe they even held a facebook account, in order to use their statements, friends list or photographs (again nothing explicit, just normal family snaps)as a reason to confront the service user

Would they be considered exceptional circumstances?

You did not answer my question 'Can anything they find be 'used' to keep children on the child protection plan'
Please give examples of what they would have had to have found

A clear and precise answer to the next question please, which only requires a yes or no answer ...

Is it not entrapment to go looking for evidence to use against service users? Something the police would not be allowed to do

Yours faithfully,

sandy Joyce

Sheila Hersom left an annotation ()

How would a social worker know what was exceptional circumstances to view Facebook

I have heard Facebook is used in many family court hearings therefore I suggest that all privacy settings are set to maximum security.

I have also heard of the LA using anti terrorist laws to snoop the everyday individual.

Dear Kent County Council,

by law, the authority should normally have responded promptly and by 11 April 2012

Yours faithfully,

sandy Joyce

Dear Kent County Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Kent County Council's handling of my FOI request 'Social Services and Facebook'.

I believe this is a straight forward request and should be answered

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/so...

Yours faithfully,

sandy Joyce

Kent County Council

Dear Sandy Joyce

Thank you for your email of 12th April.

You have asked us to review the handling of your request for information
regarding Kent County Council sanctioning "social workers snooping
through Facebook and other social networking sites, in order to find out
what service users are doing."

As I have said in recent correspondence with you, the purpose of an
internal review is to investigate whether a public authority, such as
KCC, handled a request for information in accordance with legislation,
so for example:-

Was the request responded to within statutory timescales (i.e.: no
longer than 20 working days)?
Was information withheld appropriately?
Was an exemption quoted to justify withholding information?
Was the request refused on cost grounds?

Your request was responded to within statutory timescales so KCC has
been compliant with legislation in this regard. However, because it
would take in excess of 18 hours to extrapolate the data to answer three
of your four questions, KCC has cited section 12 of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 to refuse to comply with this element of your
request. KCC does not hold the information to answer question 4. I have
investigated using other sources of information (for example, looking at
the internet history for every employee involved with social services
clients) to answer your questions but due to the numbers of employees
and volume of records to be searched, all alternatives would also exceed
the appropriate limit also and therefore, KCC is not obliged to comply
with your request.

In answer to your new question - what would KCC consider to be an
"exceptional circumstance" that would permit social workers to search
service users on social networking sites, I am afraid there is nothing
documented in this regard so we cannot confirm or deny whether the
hypothetical situations you provided would or wouldn't be considered an
"exceptional circumstance". Ultimately, use of social
networking/internet to research service users would be something
considered on a case-by-case basis and the final decision whether to or
not would be based on the professional judgement of those involved.

Please note that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides you with a
right of access to RECORDED information HELD by public authorities like
KCC. If it isn't recorded then there is no right of access, which is why
questions asking for opinion and/or comment on hypothetical situations
often remain unanswered, as the information to answer the question
simply hasn't been recorded before and doesn't exist.
Knowledge/information held in people's memories is not subject to FOIA.
Please see the Information Commissioner's website for guidance on making
a request to access official information
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/off...
x

If you remain unhappy with the outcome of this review, you can appeal
to the Information Commissioner, who oversees compliance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Details of what you need to do, should
you wish to pursue this course of action, are available from the
Information Commissioner's website
http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/freedom... or you can
phone the ICO Helpline on 08456 30 60 60.

Best regards

Caroline Dodge
Team Leader, Information Resilience & Transparency Team, Business
Strategy & Support, Governance & Law Kent County Council, Room 2.71,
Sessions House, County Road, Maidstone, ME14 1XQ
Tel: 01622 221652, Internal 7000 1652,
Fax: 01622 696075
http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/cont...
x

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David left an annotation ()

I'm pretty sure legal precedent has been set in criminal court cases now. Anything you post publicly on Facebook can be used by anyone, from social services to newspapers. If you want it private, set it private.