ContactPoint
From Blindside
Contents |
[edit] What is it
ContactPoint, formerly known as the "information sharing index" is a database of all children nationwide that is expected to become available to local authorities across Britain in 2008. It is intended to assist social services, doctors, and other care workers to identify children in need of help. Section 12 of the Children Act 2004 provides the legislative basis for establishing ContactPoint. The database was established by Section 12 of the Children Act 2004.
For each child in England under 18, the database will hold:
- Basic identifying information: name, address, gender, date of birth and a unique identifying number.
- Basic identifying information about the child's parent or carer.
- Contact details for services involved with the child: as a minimum, educational setting and GP practice, but also other services where appropriate.
- A means to indicate whether a practitioner is a lead professional and if they have undertaken an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework.
With parental consent, care leavers and those with learning difficulties may remain on the database until they are 25. The consent of the parents (or the child) will also be required in order to record sensitive services provided by practitioners, such as sexual and mental health and substance abuse services.
[edit] Impact & Maturity assessment
Impact: 2 Although the resolution of database issues elsewhere will certainly be applied to identification warehouses for children, the singular issues involving child databases (staged transference of custody and institutional responsibility, plastic morphology regarding biometrics, etc.) will require special attention.
Maturity: 1 There is little evidence that child-specific issues are being addressed systematically.
[edit] Information Assurance issues
The objections to creating a large database tracking children's lives are similar to, but not the same as, the objections to creating the national ID card and its accompanying national register. The technology is controversial because of the wholescale governmental invasion of citizens' privacy it will enable. Opponents of the ID card and registry also fear that the children's database will "soften up" the next generation so that opposition to this sort of technology will, literally, die off. The technical problems with databases - errors coupled with a tendency to rely on the database's accuracy, function creep - apply as much to a children's database as to any other kind.
Opponents to the children's database argue that the hundreds of millions of pounds it will cost would be better spent on more effective child protection, invade the privacy of families, and undermine the rights of parents.
[edit] Timescale
The impact of ContactPoint will begin with its establishment in 2008, but its full effect will not be felt until the children being born today are full-fledged adults: 18 to 25 years.
[edit] Examples
Can IT really protect children?, by Terri Dowty, Guardian, November 27, 2003.
Big Brother database to record lives of children, by Jane Merrick, Daily Mail, June 27, 2006.
Safety fear of new register of all children, by Francis Elliott, The Times, August 27, 2007.
Half a million kids' DNA on UK police database, by Mark Ballard, The Register, May 11, 2007.
Thumbs down to child index, by Terri Dowty, Guardian, December 22, 2005.
Is school fingerprinting out of bounds?, by Wendy M. Grossman, Guardian, March 30, 2006.
[edit] Comments (attributed)
"Abused and terrified children deserve a great deal more from us than relegation to some sub-category of a tracking project where their safety depends on the vagaries of a fallible machine." - Terri Dowty, Action on Rights for Children.
[edit] Organisations
Leave Them Kids Alone (specialises in the use of biometrics in schools)
[edit] Documents & research papers
Children's Common Assessment Framework (eCAF)
Action on Rights for Children's Database Masterclass
Children's databases - safety and privacy - report commissioned by the Information Commissioner's office and written by Ross Anderson, Ian Brown, Richard Clayton, Terri Dowty, Douwe Korff and Eileen Munro.
