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Privacy Policy

Ipsos and the DHSC are inviting you to take part in this research, to help us understand how mothers in England feed their babies, where they get advice about feeding their babies and about their pregnancy and lifestyle.

This Privacy Notice explains who we are, the personal data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and what your legal rights are.

About Department of Health and Social Care and Ipsos

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a government body responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England. You can find more information about DHSC at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care.

Additionally, you find the privacy statement for DHSC at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dhsc-privacy-notice.

Ipsos MORI UK Ltd is a specialist research agency, commonly known as “Ipsos”. Ipsos in the UK is part of the Ipsos worldwide group of companies, and a member of the Market Research Society. Ipsos have been appointed by DHSC to co-ordinate the Infant Feeding Survey.

Ipsos will also be hosting the online survey on behalf of DHSC. DHSC will not have access to any of your contact details.

How did you get my details?

NHS England holds your contact details as part of your patient records and Ipsos has been given Section 251 support as recommended by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on advice from the Confidentiality Advisory Group. This gives Ipsos permission to use these contact details to contact you on behalf of DHSC, to invite you to take part in the survey. Names were chosen from patients who had used the maternity services in December 2023. The following data has been used as part of the survey process:

Your contact details will not be shared outside of Ipsos or its approved suppliers.

If you take part in the survey, your anonymised data will be shared with the research team at Ipsos who will keep your data confidential and will be doing the analysis of the data. Fully anonymised datasets will be shared with the DHSC for research purposes only.

The anonymised dataset will be made available to the public on the UK Data Archive for other organisations and researchers to access for research purposes and to support DHSC, and other organisations develop public policy and programmes.

What is our legal basis for processing your personal data?

Ipsos require a legal basis to process your personal data. Our legal basis for processing your personal data under Article 6(1) (e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is ‘public task’, for “the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller” – in which case is provided by DHSC as the government body responsible for health and social care policy in England. If you wish to withdraw your consent at any time, please see the section below covering ‘Your Rights’.

Ipsos is also processing your data under section 251 of the National Health Service Act 2006 and has received support as recommended by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on advice from the Confidentiality Advisory Group.

Do I have to take part?

Taking part is entirely voluntary and choosing not to take part will not affect the care you receive now or in the future. Additionally, you do not need to provide a reason.

What will I be asked to do?

We are asking you to complete a questionnaire about your experiences of feeding your most recent child.

The survey will include questions about how you feed your baby, where you get advice on feeding your baby, as well as some questions about your pregnancy and lifestyle.

Have you got access to my health data?

NHS England has access to your patient records but the use of these details are strictly managed and controlled. Ipsos has applied through NHS England’s data access request service to gain access to a limited amount of your health information for this survey. A very limited amount of health information will be used in this study for analysis purposes only and will help DHSC to better understand the survey data and the experiences of people like you.

The information collected for the purposes of this survey include mother’s year of birth, date of delivery, place of delivery, NHS site code and postcode.

How will DHSC and Ipsos use any personal data including survey responses you provide?

Ipsos will keep your contact details in the strictest confidence in accordance with this Privacy Policy and use them solely for this research. Your contact details will be deleted at the end of this research project.

Your name and address will be kept separate from your answers.

Ipsos will keep your survey responses in strict confidence in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

No identifiable data will be shared outside of Ipsos and its approved suppliers and it will not be possible to identify you in any published results.

Who is my personal data shared with?

Ipsos is working with a number of supplier organisations to assist us in running this survey. All these supplier organisations are approved and compliant with UK General Data Protection Regulations. These supplier organisations are:

Ipsos MORI UK Ltd – commonly known as “Ipsos” – is a specialist research agency who will be hosting the online survey on behalf of DHSC. Ipsos will hold your online survey response and provide a copy of it, along with the serial number to DHSC.

Additionally, Ipsos will be responsible for collating and analysing the pseudonymised results for the Infant Feeding Survey on behalf of DHSC.

Therefore, on completion of fieldwork, Ipsos will have access to your pseudonymised response data. Please note this will not include your name and contact details.

Ipsos and all suppliers are compliant with the General Data Protection Regulations.

How will Ipsos keep my personal information secure?

Ipsos take its information security responsibilities seriously and apply various precautions to ensure your information is protected from loss, theft or misuse. Security precautions include appropriate physical security of offices and controlled and limited access to computer systems.

Ipsos have regular internal and external audits of its information security controls and working practices and are accredited to the International Standard for Information Security, ISO 27001.

Does this survey use Cookies or similar code?

Some online surveys collect information through the use of 'cookies'. These are small files stored on your computer. These files are used as sparingly as possible and only for quality control, validation and, more importantly, to prevent us sending you reminders for an online survey you have already completed. It is possible for you to delete 'cookies' or to prevent their use by adjusting the browser settings on your computer.

We also automatically capture information about your operating system, display settings and browser type in order to ensure that the survey questionnaire is delivered in a form suited to the software your computer is using. We do not capture any other information from your computer.

How long will Ipsos retain my personal data and identifiable responses?

Ipsos will only retain your survey related data in a way that can identify you for as long as is necessary to support the research project and findings. In practice, this means that once we have satisfactorily obtained the research data, we will securely remove your personal, identifying data from our survey related systems.

For this project we will securely remove your personal data from our systems three months after publication. Publication is planned for 2025.

Your contact information will not be used by Ipsos for anything other than the purpose of this survey.

Your rights and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

You have the right to access your personal data within the period that Ipsos holds it.

Providing responses to this survey is entirely voluntary and is done so with your consent.  You have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal data at any time, although once data is analysed it is not possible to withdraw your data from the outputs.

You also have the right to rectify any incorrect or out-of-date personal data about you which we may hold.

If you want to exercise your rights, please contact Ipsos at the below address.

We must generally respond to requests in relation to your rights within one month, although there are some exceptions to this.     

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or another data protection regulator, if you have concerns on how we have processed your personal data. You can find details about how to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ or by sending an email to: casework@ico.org.uk.

Where will my personal data be held and processed?

All of your personal data used and collected for this survey will be stored by Ipsos in data centres and servers within the United Kingdom and EEA.

How can I contact Ipsos/DHSC about this survey and/or my personal data?

Contact Ipsos

Email:
uk-pa-infantfeedingsurvey@ipsos.com with “23-018281-01 and Infant Feeding Survey Research” in the email subject line.

Post:  
23-018281-01 and Infant Feeding Survey Research
Data Protection Officer
Compliance Department
Ipsos MORI UK Ltd
3 Thomas More Square
London E1W 1YW
United Kingdom

Contact the Department of Health & Social Care 

Email:
data_protection@dhsc.gov.uk with “23-01828101-01 and Infant Feeding Survey Research” in the email subject line .

Post:
23-01828101-01 and Infant Feeding Survey Research
Data Protection Officer
Department for Health and Social Care
39 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0EU
United Kingdom