Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage Privacy Notice

Updated November 1, 2022. Effective: January 1, 2023

This First Steps Kent Privacy Practice describes how personal information about you and your child may be used and disclosed by programs funded by the Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage. Please review it carefully.

Who will follow this notice:

Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage funding for programming is made possible because of the generosity of Kent County taxpayers and the voter-approved Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage. This millage provides dedicated and sustainable funding for programs that improve the health, school readiness, and well-being of children through the age of five in Kent County. First Steps Kent is the administrator of the Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage.

How the Ready by Five Service provider agency will disclose your personal information for the purposes of reporting:

As the program you are participating in is run by a service provider agency funded by the Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage, information collected about you and your child by your selected service provider agency is securely sent to the Kent County Health Department on a regular basis.

If once you or your child continue to receive services from your service provider agency after the Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage funding ends or your child enrolled is no longer eligible, the service provider may continue to keep your and your child’s information to offer continued programming and supports to you and your child. You and your child’s information will no longer be sent to the Kent County Health Department or any other agency except as you direct.

Information shared by your service provider with the Kent County Health Department as part of the Ready by Five program will be indefinitely retained by the Kent County Health Department after your family or child stops receiving services from the service provider agency. For additional information regarding protections applicable to personal health information, refer to Kent County’s HIPAA Privacy Notice available here.

Additional ways your and your child’s information will be shared:

As the Ready by Five Millage administrator, First Steps Kent will receive and store de-identified information for the duration of time the Ready by Five Early Childhood Millage funding continues.

De-identified information generally refers to personal information about you or your child individually that has removed key information (i.e., first name, last name, date of birth, or home address) that would allow a person (including First Steps Kent employees) to determine your or your child’s identity or the name of an individual who participates in a Ready by Five Millage funded program.

First Steps Kent will use this de-identified information for the following purposes:

• Reporting: deidentified information will be received from the Kent County Health Department to produce aggregate-level reports about the outcome of services provided by the Ready by Five Millage programs. All reports made publicly available to the community will contain only de-identified information about individuals receiving a millage-funded service.

• Quality Assurance/Utilization: de-identified information will be used for quality improvement purposes for programs and to understand who is enrolling in Ready by Five Millage-funded services and how to better reach families in Kent County.
• For verifying payments to your selected Service provider agency: de-identified information may be used, as necessary, to verify completed services to send payment for all services you or your child receives. Use and disclosure of this information will be limited to purposes necessary to the business activities of First Steps Kent.
• As Required: Responding to a court order or other legal process.

Information received by the Kent County Health Department may be used to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of programs funded by Ready by Five Millage and their impact on healthy births and Kindergarten readiness.

The Kent County Health Department will share limited information about your child with the Kent Intermediate School District (Kent ISD) including your child’s first and last name, date of birth, and gender.

The Kent County Health Department may also link birth weight data obtained from your child’s birth certificate to the data sent to Kent County Health Department. The Kent County Health Department will access birth weight data from the State of Michigan’s Birth Certificate Registry. Sharing birth weight data is dependent on your consent and formal approval from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Institutional Review Board.

Third-party contractors may be hired specifically to assist with this evaluation work. Contractors will have access to information only as needed to perform such functions and may not use it for any other purpose.

Evaluation may include the joining of the information collected by the Kent County Health Department to Kent Intermediate School District. For each set of child-identified information provided, Kent ISD, with permission from the primary school district, may provide to Kent County Health Department one or both of the following assessments your child will participate with, including a) Kindergarten Readiness Assessment data for the child’s first year of kindergarten, and b) Preschool Assessment data (only if your child is enrolled in preschool at Head Start or a program receiving Great Start Readiness Program funding). Kent ISD may share this information in a de-identified format with First Steps Kent.

The Kent County Health Department will not provide any additional identifiable information about you or your child to anyone else without your consent.