Registering for drs whilst maintaining confidentiality

[twentyninestory]

We’re in a F2A placement and need to register the child at local doctors and dentist. Any advice on how to navigate maintaining confidentiality and safety in both directions? For example, we have already thought about asking the drs not to show the child’s full name on the screen in waiting room.

Will birth family be able to access the child’s NHS record and see our address on there? We don’t have the info from previous doctors, but will they be contacted, and could this lead to birth family being contacted at all about the new surgery? (LO wasn’t with a previous foster carer before coming to us.)

Any advice greatly appreciated as we need to ensure our town and address remains confidential, and haven’t had any support from social workers on how to do this. Just been told to register!

We met with the practice manager and got them to add a little pop up at the top of the kids notes to neither confirm nor deny that they were at that practice and to call us back on the number they had on record if it was a anonymous number or didn't match the ones we gave them (and we always called them with our numbers available). We also emphasised strongly the need for confidentiality and that we were willing to take it further if required.

I don't know how BP would access their records if the child's doctors had changed, but it might be worth thinking about asking at your new surgery whether they can remotely force a log off of any online systems for anyone on the system and a password reset so that it goes to your details, if that makes sense?

You could also call the previous surgery and check that all physical records have been transferred appropriately, because then there shouldn't be anything on site that BPs can access.

The dentist was much more simple in many ways, they just registered us and it was like it was just brand new, no records were transferred.

We did something similar to @Torvy after a scare where our F2A placement was deregistered and "moved" to her birth mother's GP practice! Our surgery refused to tell us why! It was a stressful few hours from finding this out - when we tried to request a repeat prescription and were told she was no longer registered there. - to get her back on the books. We had to get the social worker for the baby to contact the birth mother's surgery and sort it out urgently. It turned out BM's practice had registered her automatically at birth as part of some sort of automatic post natal thing, but in fact they hadn't processed her paperwork until more than a month after she had been born and placed with us.We could see the dates on the forms once the records were reset up. (We don't think BM was trying to track her, she was very vulnerable and was no doubt told to fill in a form, which she duly did, only for the processing to be delayed.) After that kerfuffle our practice have been pretty good, putting a pop up on her records, which are password protected so we have to say a password every time we go in. (Mind you we have to bellow that through a COVID protection screen at reception but anyway...) Even so nce she got a new NHS number at adoption, I felt much happier.

Side note: It did kind of amaze me that a large urban gp surgery hadn't come across the change of NHS number on adoption thing before. We virtually had to tell them what to do and still not convinced the GP put her full medical records on when they switched her to the new number.

@Parksitting oh I agree about the new NHS number being essential, a relief but also a massive ball ache.

I can be slightly lenient with the surgery a bit because modern adoption numbers are generally so low, and the circumstances for otherwise changing an NHS number is so rare (witness protection being one of them) that actually if you divide it by area, then by GP surgery, then by the fact that most gp receptionists dog stay for very long, it makes sense that they haven't had much experience of changing an NHS number.

We never had much luck making our surgery use a password beyond the first couple of weeks, but in theory it should work!

Torvy and Parksitting give great advice, the only thing I would add is that the NHS is surprisingly not 'joined up' so never assume what one part of the NHS knows others will know too.

GP surgery was great, there was an agreement for my youngest that we booked all appointments as a double one for me and her, and that they would call my name out. Local hospital was great. Then a big tertiary hospital with a v specialist clinic (I didn't know the referral wasn't dealt with at the local hospital) didn't know any of the details and rang BM and shared my phone number with her!! Although they did report what had happened very promptly when they realised to be fair. So if you've got any other input above the universal GP, dentist and HV then be sure to make sure they are aware too.

The headache of nhs and confidentiality, we know it well. Early days of f2a placement a letter was sent to birth mum confirming that child had been registered at our doctors. Luckily we live away from doctors/ not our nearest or most obvious doctors, so didn’t narrow done where we were, and she gave us the letter rather than hide that she knew so it didn’t turn into a safety risk, but really made me think about others in less safe placements that ours.

as above ask the go/dentist not a call out full name.

Do family and friends of child parents live in the local area? With both of mine I did have to realise that the chances of anyone remotely connected to my children being in any of our nhs centres was remarkably low so try not to over think it, but that was a benefit of living rurally, and not particularly close to birth parents.