IS Index

The Children’s Information Sharing (IS) Index

 The Government has drafted regulations that will allow them to set up a national database of all children – the Information Sharing (or ‘IS’) Index. It is seeking views on these draft regulations until December 14^th 2006, and will then produce the final regulations to go before Parliament early in 2007.

 MPs and Peers will have to pass a resolution to approve the regulations. If Parliament does approves them, work will begin on building the IS Index straight away.  

 The Government plans to have all children entered on the IS index by 2008. It will be a single, national index partitioned into 150 local authority sections. Each local authority will be responsible for running its own section.

The Information-Sharing Index will track all children from birth.

 The draft regulations to operate the Index can be found here.

 In summary, this is what they say:

 Each child’s entry on the Information Sharing Index will show:

Ø      The child’s name, gender, date of birth and address

Ø      An identification number for the child

Ø      Parents’ names and addresses (or of person with parental responsibility)

Ø      Details of child’s doctor, health visitor, midwife and/or school nurse

Ø      Details of child’s school/college (or of education they are receiving if not at school)

Ø      Details of all services* a child uses + dates when service started and ended

*It will also show if a child is receiving a ‘sensitive service’ but the details won’t be displayed. A ‘sensitive service’ is: mental health, sexual health or substance abuse treatment. Individual practitioners in these services will normally need the consent of their client/patient before putting details on the IS Index. Once they have been put on the Index, the local authority will decide who can have access to this information.

Any practitioner working with a child must indicate when they have:

Ø      Information to share

Ø      Taken any action in relation to the child

Ø      Completed an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework

 The following people/bodies must supply information to the Information Sharing Index:

Ø      Local Authority – which includes all LA services in education, social care etc

Ø      Health Authorities, NHS Trust, Primary Care Trust – all health workers

Ø      Learning and Skills Council

Ø      Connexions

Ø      School, special school and college governors

Ø      Proprietor of an independent school

Ø      Police

Ø      Probation & Youth Offending Team

Ø      Prison governor

Ø      Registrar General (births, deaths and marriages)

Ø      CAFCASS

The following may supply information to the Information Sharing Index:

Ø      Childminders, playgroups & nurseries

Ø      Voluntary organisations

Ø      HM Revenue and Customs

Ø      Registered social landlord

Ø      Fire and rescue authorities

Ø      Doctors, dentists, opticians, osteopaths, chiropractors, nurses, midwives, health visitors, pharmacists, paramedics, any other practitioner who is liable to regulation under section 25(3) of the National Health Service Reform and Health Care Professions Act 2002

 Each local authority will decide who may access the IS index.

 Any person given access to the index must undergo training and have a CRB check, and must be in one of the categories given in paragraph 6 of the draft regulations. Broadly speaking, these are:

Ø      LA services in education, social care etc

Ø      Health care professionals

Ø      Connexions employee

Ø      Head teacher; deputy head teacher; school administrator; a head of year or  teacher with pastoral or child protection responsibilities; SEN teacher; SEN coordinator

Ø      Proprietor of an independent school

Ø      Police officer

Ø      Probation officer

Ø      Youth Offending Team member

Ø      Prison governor

ARCH is extremely concerned about the planned Information Sharing Index for the following reasons:

1. Although the government says that the IS Index will contain only ‘basic details’, it will actually create a log of every service a child receives. That’s a lot of information. For example, even giving ‘basic’ school details can show a child’s religion, and also whether they have disabilities or special needs. Contact details of parents show whether parents are separated or single.

2. The purpose of the IS Index is to allow practitioners to link up with each other to exchange information. There are already a large number of databases in education, social care, youth justice and the police, each of them holding detailed information about children. Some are used to try to ‘predict’ which children may become criminals, even though the evidence about the accuracy of these ‘predictions’ is by no means clear.

3. Although government guidance says that further information known to individual practitioners (beyond what is required to build the IS Index) should not normally be exchanged without consent, this is a very grey area. For example, the Youth Justice Board believes that consent is not necessary when practitioners are trying to identify a child who may become an offender. Many practitioners believe that information can be shared under wide legal powers such as ‘preventing crime’ or ‘improving the local area’. There is also the question of whether a young person can give lawful consent in his/her own right, and whether people may feel under pressure to give consent, especially as the new children’s policy identifies sharing more information as the key to improving services.  In the case of child protection concerns, practitioners will continue with the current policy of sharing information without consent.

4. The government has given the impression that the IS Index is about ‘child protection’, but this is simply not true. Ministers have repeatedly talked about Victoria Climbie and used words like ‘at risk’, but the usual meaning of ‘at risk’ has in fact been changed.  The government has re-defined it as being ‘at risk’ of committing crime, of failing at school, of becoming pregnant in one’s teens, or of becoming ‘socially excluded’. It no longer means ‘at risk’ of abuse or neglect. The IS Index would not have helped Victoria Climbie. Her death came about because several practitioners failed to interpret correctly the information they already had.

5. Many experts have argued that the IS Index will make it less likely that a child at risk of abuse will be noticed because the warning signs won’t be noticed when there is so much other, trivial information being logged and monitored.

6. Government IT projects have an appalling record of failure and breakdown. If practitioners are dependent on a database to alert them to signs of neglect or abuse, a breakdown could place vulnerable children at even greater risk. Similarly, families who need services are likely to experience serious delays in getting what they need.

7. The IS Index will show whether an assessment has been carried out under the Common Assessment Framework (CAF). The CAF will collect details on every aspect of a child’s life, including assessment of his/her mental health and the capabilities of parents. The CAF can be carried out by any practitioner who believes a child needs more services – the government estimates that around 1 in 3 children come into this category. The CAF will be held on a parallel database: the eCAF. The government says that a CAF should only be carried out and shared with consent, but the comments we have made above about consent apply also to the CAF. There is anecdotal evidence from the pilot projects that consent is being sought as a condition of receiving a service.

8. The government says that it will cost £224m to set up the IS Index, and another £41m per year to run it. This is a major database project and, so far, all of the government’s major IT projects have cost far more than was predicted. The £41m running costs appear very optimistic: this amounts to £270,000 per local authority. Bearing in mind the extra staff that will be needed, the training costs whenever a new practitioner is given access, the system maintenance and upgrade costs, it is difficult to see how it will only cost £41m per year. Will the additional costs have to be borne by local councils?

9. Local authorities have to pay for the eCAF system themselves. They also have to pay for another new system: the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), a database that will store every child’s social services record. The government’s own Society of Information Technology Management estimates that installing an ICS system  will cost each local authority £1m and that government grants offered to local authorities are only a fraction of the true cost. Local authorities are meant to install eCAF and ICS without increasing council tax, which means that other services have to be cut.

10. We believe it would be better to spend all of this money on services. At the moment 11% of social work posts have not been filled, and around half of all local authorities have ‘unallocated’ child protection cases because they are short-staffed. If the government is really concerned about child protection, they should be putting the money into staffing, training and supervision of social workers. It would also be better if money were made available for equipment and services for families that need them – for example where a child has disabilities. At the moment, many families are finding that they can’t get basic equipment like wheelchairs or bath-aids, or respite care, because of cuts in local authority budgets.

11. There is no such thing as a secure database system. The Government has already indicated that ‘celebrity’ children or families escaping domestic violence will not have their details visible on the Index. If the system were completely secure, they wouldn’t need to do this.

12. The greatest danger comes from people with access to the Index. Sometimes they are careless about security, leaving files open on their computer, or giving their password to someone else. Sometimes, ‘insiders’ will sell information. Earlier this year the Information Commissioner published a report: ‘What Price Privacy?’ in which he set out the going rate for different types of confidential information held on government databases.

 WHAT YOU CAN DO

 If you are concerned about the Information Sharing Index, contact your MP as soon as possible. The regulations to allow the Index to go ahead must be approved by Parliament, and they will be asked to do this early in the New Year.

 Tell your MP why you object to the database, and that you don’t want him/her to vote in favour of the regulations.

 You can also respond to the Government’s consultation on the regulations – details of how to do this are here 

download this doc

*for a 50 pack of A5 leaflets please contact us - a £1 donation to help cover p&p would be appreciated*

top of page