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Sent yesterday from the wrong address!
Dear Wendy,
In my understanding, this information will be 'sensitive' under the Data Protection Act so you need to ensure that you only give it to people who need it to provide services to the student and who the disabled person could reasonably foresee having access to the information when they decide to disclose it in the first place. Otherwise you will probably breach both data protection and disability discrimination law. It's not clear from the way you pose your query whether your approach to this is sufficiently fine-tuned, but the Code of Practice for providers of Post 16 education and related services http://www.drc-gb.org/Docs/codeofpracticepost16_pt4.doc has a (short) section setting out the basic principles. I don't think you can proceed on an opt-out basis, because you cannot ensure informed consent that way and students may find information they don't want circulated 'dispersed'
through an oversight on their part.
I hope this helps. I feel sure that there must be more guidance on this somewhere (The Equality Challenge Unit? ) but I'm not immersed in this stuff at the moment!
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wendy Knowles
Sent: 27 June 2006 11:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: confidential information
We are currently looking at how we can improve our procedures within the Disability Department here. One of the things we are considering is dispersing confidential information on disability within the University unless the student asks us not to do so. We will produce a letter of explanation for the students before their arrival. This we hope will speed up the process of dispersal. What we are not sure about is if this is actually legal! Comments much appreciated. Many thanks
Wendy Knowles
Disability Unit Co-ordinator
York St John University College
Lord Mayors Walk
York
YO31 7EX
Tel: 01904 71(6541)
Email:[log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]