Confidentiality & The Data Protection Act

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Confidentiality is an ethical belief associated with many professions such as medicine, law and religion. It means keeping information given by or about an individual secure and secret from others.  This confidentiality is seen as an essential thing to be able to keep the trust between professional and service users. Within the setting, confidentiality is about protecting children’s and adult’s rights to privacy. In settings, they have a confidentiality policy to ensure that no information is passed onto anyone else outside the setting. It is a very important part of the practitioner’s job. It is about trust between the practitioner and the parent/carer.

The Data Protection Act 1998 is the law that supports confidentiality. It was passed in Parliament to control the way we store information is handled and to give legal rights to people who have information stored about them. We as practitioners, have to keep the child’s information private by keeping information stored carefully and in confidence in a locked cupboard or on a password protected computer. Some data and information which is stored on a computer is personal and needs to be kept confidential, which is why the Data Protection Act supports confidentiality. If someone who is not entitled to see these details can obtain access without permission, it is an unauthorised access. The Data Protection Act sets up rules to prevent this from happening.

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In a setting there will be a confidentiality policy in place that all members of staff must follow. As part of the setting, whilst doing my observations I had to follow this confidentiality policy.

In my observations I protected the child by using initials and naming my child ‘Child A’, by asking permission from the teacher and the child’s parents to observe them, and by blacking out their faces and names on any pictures, pieces of work I used or took. I also made sure that any information I took from the child, I stored correctly and ...

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