Sosiaalihuollon asiakkaalle, informoinnint

For social welfare customers

Valid as of 1 January 2023 

Wellbeing services county of North Savo 
P.O. Box 1711 
70211 KUOPIO 
kirjaamo@pshyvinvointialue.fi 

The officeholder in charge is Ms Marena Paahto, Director of social welfare services. 

The email address of the controller’s data protection officer is tietosuoja@pshyvinvointialue.fi (general advice only). 

We process your data in the Social Welfare Customer Register of the North Savo wellbeing services county. The register covers documents and records drawn up or received for the purpose of producing and implementing services for you and they contain data concerning your customer relationship with social welfare services or other personal data on you. 

Your data will be processed for the purposes of organising and carrying out social welfare services for you. When you apply for a social welfare service or are a customer of social welfare services, data necessary for these purposes will be recorded in your customer documents. Social welfare service tasks include: Services for the aged, services for persons with disabilities, services for families with children, services for persons of working age, substance abuse treatment services, family law services, and child welfare. 

Your data may also be processed for other lawful purposes, such as scientific research, knowledge management, or statistics. 

Processing your personal data is necessary in order to comply with the statutory obligation of the data controller. On the basis of more specific legal provisions, data processing may also be justified because it is necessary 

  • for establishing medical diagnoses and for organising health care or social welfare services; 
  • for the management of healthcare and social welfare services and systems; 
  • because of a public interest related to public health (e.g. protection against serious cross-border health threats, or ensuring high standards of quality and safety in health care and for medicinal products or medical devices); 
  • in order to respect specific rights in the fields of labour law, social security and social protection, or 
  • for archiving, for scientific and historical research or for compiling statistics, in the name of public interest. 

Personal data are obtained from you personally and as explained in the section entitled “Regular sources of personal data”. 

The following categories of personal data are processed in the context of the processing of personal data: 

General personal data: your name, your contact details, your personal identity code, contact details of your next of kin, your native language or language of communication, and, where applicable, contact details of a minor’s custodian or legal representative 

Specific personal data 

  • information about cases opened by the social services, including applications, notifications and contacts as well as data on their processing 
  • information about a service need assessment 
  • information about the planning of services, such as customer plans and service plans 
  • information about organising services, including decisions, payment commitments, letters, opinions, referrals, and requests for administrative assistance 
  • information about the implementation of services 
  • customer report entries and other social welfare customer documents produced in the context of service provision 

Technical personal data: - 

Other personal data, to be specified: - 

To the extent that personal data have not been collected from you personally or from your legal representative or other person close to you, the regular sources of personal data are: 

  • as for information and reports having a significant impact on your customer relationship with social welfare services, they are also received from government authorities, bodies governed by public law, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), the Finnish Centre for Pensions, company pensions funds and other pension institutions, insurance institutions, education providers, social service providers, organisations or operating units engaged in health and medical care activities, and healthcare professionals. 
  • from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency’s population data register. 

The data contained in your customer documents may be transferred to service providers of the North Savo wellbeing services county, for example, when services are produced by means of service vouchers. 

Your customer data may be archived in the national customer data archives (Kanta), which is maintained by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela). 

Data in your customer documents concerning you may only be disclosed with your consent or with the consent of your legal representative or on the basis of a legal provision justifying such disclosure. You cannot prohibit disclosures of customer data that are based on legislation. 

On some occasions, your personal data may be transferred to third countries outside the EU or the EEA in the context of providing a service for you. In such cases, the transfer of personal data is justified by a decision by the European Commission on an adequate level of data protection or by the standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission. 

We shall also protect your data on a case-by-case basis, for example, by encrypting or pseudonymising them. 

We shall protect your personal data by implementing technical and organisational safeguards, such as: 

  • protecting customer data systems by means of a username and password. Access rights are only granted to the employees of the data controller who are entitled to use such data in their work tasks; 
  • placing data systems in a secure environment protected with firewalls and maintained by applying appropriate data security practices, such as anti-malware programs and regular security updates; 
  • storing any paper materials in appropriately controlled spaces, access to which is restricted by access rights; 
  • storing archived materials in appropriately controlled spaces, access to which is restricted by access rights; 
  • training employees and giving written instructions to them; 
  • by contractual means. 

Your personal data generated after 1 April 2015 will be stored in accordance with the legislation on customer documents in social welfare (in Finnish only) and other applicable legislation. 

Documents created between the year 1920 and 1 April 2015 are subject to the decision of the National Archives of Finland on the destruction of municipal documents, Part 5: Documents created by social welfare services and guardianship services. Documents created before 1920 shall be kept permanently. 

Read more about your data protection rights on the Your data protection rights web page. If you wish to exercise your right, please contact the registry of the North Savo wellbeing services county, P.O. Box 1711, 70211 KUOPIO, or kirjaamo@pshyvinvointialue.fi.

 You can also contact the Data Protection Officer to inquire about the use of your rights, tietosuoja@pshyvinvointialue.fi