Government outlines next steps towards improving services for children
The government has outlined details of regulations that will enable it to begin trialling a new information-sharing index for children.
The index, one of the measures contained in the 2004 Children Act, is intended to facilitate the sharing of information between different agencies on children who may be in need of particular services or welfare support.
It will hold basic identifying information on all children in England and contain the names and contact details of practitioners providing specialist and targeted services to a child.
In the House of Lords on Monday, Education Minister Lord Adonis, set out details of a series of pilots the government is now planning to trial the new index.
Adonis said: "The information sharing index… will support more effective prevention and early intervention to ensure that children get the additional services that they need as early as possible. The aim is to improve the reliability and quality of public services for all children, young people and families."
He acknowledged that there had been some concern during the passage of the Children Bill through parliament over the feasibility of holding such a large volume of data.
"That is why we are proceeding by way of trials. The regulations will provide us with the legal basis to undertake key tests in relation to the accuracy and quality of the data that will populate the index," he said
Adonis said the results of the trials would inform the final design of the index and help refine the statutory guidance and full regulations, due later in the year, to support the full index.
To create a record on the index containing basic information for each child, Adonis said it would be necessary to draw upon a number of sources for the relevant data. "There is no single data source which currently contains them all," he said.
The trials will examine a sample of records from each of the relevant data sources. "This will enable an assessment of how comprehensively each source covers the population of children and which is the most reliable source of accurate and up-to-date information," Adonis said.
Nine local authorities have been chosen to participate in the trials, and they will be expected to provide basic child information, such as name, address, date of birth and gender.
Data will also be taken from national government sources to provide information on child benefit records.
Adonis stressed that no personal or medical records can be included on the index, and that collected information would be limited to data necessary to complete the trials successfully.
And he added that the government would ensure there are "stringent security measures controlling the physical security of the hardware and systems used to transmit and hold the data for testing.
"Only a strictly limited number of authorised staff from my department and its contractor will have access to it," he said.
