A Caldicott Guardian is a senior person responsible for protecting the confidentiality of people’s health and care information and making sure it is used properly.

All NHS organisations, and local authorities which provide social services, must have a Caldicott Guardian.

The Caldicott Guardian for Barnsley CCG is Jayne Sivakumar, chief nurse.

Every NHS organisation is required to have a Caldicott Guardian; this was mandated for the NHS by an official Health Service Circular in 1999. The mandate covers all organisations that have access to patient records; the clinical commissioning groups in England deal with minimal patient / personal data: the three main categories being:

• Complaints
• Member of Parliament letters / correspondence
• Staff files / data

The Caldicott Guardian has a strategic role, which involves representing and championing issues related to information sharing at Governing Body or executive level.

Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO)

The Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) will take overall ownership of Barnsley CCG’s Information Risk Policy and act as champion for information risk on the governing body.

The SIRO for our CCG is Richard Walker, head of governance and assurance.

The SIRO understands how the strategic business goals of the CCG and how other NHS organisations’ business goals may be impacted by information risks, and how those risks may be managed.

The SIRO will implement and lead the NHS Information Governance (IG) risk assessment and management processes within the CCG and advise on the effectiveness of information risk management across the organisation.