Office of the Privacy Commissioner | Information Sharing Guidance - Child Welfare and Family Violence
The Ministry of Justice and Oranga Tamariki have guidance on requesting, sharing, and using personal information.
Sharing information about an individual is often essential to their health, safety and wellbeing.
For social service agencies and their employees to do their job effectively, they often have to consult with each other to ensure that the right kind of intervention is made at the right time. To do this, they need to share information while remaining on the right side of laws around personal, health and other information.
Provisions covering information sharing arrangements have been added to the The Family Violence Act 2019 and the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989. These provisions took effect on 1 July 2019.
Information sharing guidance - Oranga Tamariki
See the guidelines for Oranga Tamariki here
Intention:
- Enable child welfare and protection agencies, and some independent persons, to request, use and share personal information for specific purposes related to the wellbeing and safety of children.
What do the provisions do?
- Enable child welfare and protection agencies* to request, use, and share personal information for specific purposes related to the wellbeing and safety of tamariki.
Who is covered by the provisions?
- Non-government organisations
- District health boards and health practitioners
- Government agencies
- Community housing providers
- Schools teachers, principals, school boards of trustees and early childhood services
Information sharing guidance - Ministry of Justice
See the guidelines issued by Ministry of Justice here
Intention:
- Enable family violence prevention agencies and social service practitioners to collect, use, request and share information
What do the provisions do?
- Empower safe and appropriate information sharing to allow better coordinated responses to assess and manage family violence risk. Together, the law encourages the family violence sector to collaborate to identify, stop, prevent and otherwise respond to family violence.
Who is covered by the provisions?
- Specified government agencies
- Non-governmental organisations funded by the government to provide family violence-related services
- School boards
- Licenced early childhood services
- Teachers with current practicing certificates
- Registered health practitioners
- Registered social workers
Principles behind 2019 guidance revisions:
- People’s safety comes first
- You should obtain consent to share information when it’s safe to do so
- You must consider sharing information if you think it will protect a victim or if you receive a request
- You can share information for specific purposes
- You must only share relevant information
- You should check that the information is accurate
- You should record reasons for your decisions
- You have legal protection from liability when you share information, unless you share in bad faith.
Oranga Tamariki information sharing resources
Access guidance and resources (via the Oranga Tamariki website) about how to share and request information within the child welfare sector, and what the information sharing provisions are. Their information includes guidance, forms for requesting information, resources, and training material.