The children's database

[emmaagain]

Not feeling so splendid about the prospect of HM government having a new massive database containing our children's names, DoB, address, school, GP, any contact with HVs or social services, inside leg measurements, favourite snacks...?

THere's a petition here

petitions.pm.gov.uk/Databases/

Spread the word. It'd be great if this one snowballed into being an enormous message to the politicos :-)

but how would they know who to pay Child Benefit to otherwise?

the database per se is not at fault, it is the security and method of getting the information from place to place

so , won;t be signing

also, surely having all the info in one place is better, especially when things are being dealt with by different agencies...

Furball: why does whichever government agency it is need to know what school a child goes to, who their GP is and whether they've ever been to A&E in order to pay child benefit to them?

Camillathechicken: I think the figure I heard was 350,000 people will have access to that secure database. So that's not really very secure at all, is it?

Seems like a huge civil liberties issue to me, but maybe I'm just a bit too libertarian for my own good

i'd be interested to see some more info about this database ..

350 000 could be GPs, social workers, lawyers etc.. not just all and sundry Joe Public wanting to be nosy

Well you don't but - how would they know when your child should have important immunisations, or start school or if I was battering my daughter everyweek resulting in her attending A & E and needed important interventions etc etc etc.

Human nature being what it is, not all those 350,000 people will be honourable people who never ever give into temptation to have a snoop into things that are none of their concern. We've already had hospital workers in the NE looking up the NHS electronic database to snigger at a celeb.

You can't have a database accessible by thousands of people that is secure, it's just not possible.

And the government knows this - that's why they are making sure that none of their children are on it. VIPs - celebs, politicians and the like ? are exempt. It's just us poor proles who are a. under constant suspicion and supervision and b. at risk of having our children's private, personal details made available to any nosey parker who knows how to use a computer. Or happens to be passing a place where there is access to a terminal - in the NHS nurses have been caught leaving their keycards in the computer in public areas all day so they don't have to log on individually ever time.

Because of course, no high profile people are ever guilty of child abuse...

This government just enjoys being Big Brother. More CCTV cameras than any other country in the world, more people locked up than any other European nation, reversing the data protection principle that information given can only be used for the purpose it was given and endless mass databases infringing our privacy.

If you were battering your daughter and taking her to A&E every week, I'd hope someone in A&E would notice. You don't need a massive database containing the personal, private details of every child in the country, set up without our consent, to do that.

What exactly do you think these evil members of the 350000 are going to do with the information...?

Breach confidentiality, rip off a disc and stick it in the post, use the information to target children for abuse (in any group of 350,000 people there are bound to be some paedophiles)...

I'm torn with the idea of this. As someone who worked with children and young people for over 20 years I think its about time that we had something like this.

As the grandmother whose Grandchild was beaten up by his father and hospitalised at 5 months old I think it's a fantastic idea - especially as we would have known the truth about his father as soon as I voiced my initial concerns about the baby's safety.His father had already been banned from having any contact with another child that he has (it took very little snooping on my part to track the child down, Social Services did not have the legal right to do it, nor, if I TBH, the inclination).

On the other hand, considering the recent fiasco with the child benefit data - NOT A GOOD IDEA.

I'm also surprised that people don't think all this information is very easily accessible already to anyone who has access to medical or school records.

Furball said:

"Well you don't but - how would they know when your child should have important immunisations, or start school or if I was battering my daughter every week resulting in her attending A & E and needed important interventions etc etc etc."

Battering: A&E already notice if someone goes in often, and I understand that they are pretty good at spotting battered children, and passing the case over to SS. I took a child to A&E twice in a few weeks once, for completely unrelated and innocent accidents, neither of which would have looked anything like child abuse (one involved an airway partially blocked with a piece of food with blue light flashing all the way...) and I had a HV make contact soon after to make sure everything was ok. The NHS are already on it. No need for thousands of unrelated pubilc sector workers to have access to such data.

Immunisations - how many of us miss immunisations because we don't know about it? The NHS, again, has systems in place, and again, there's no need for school teachers, say, to have access to information about whether or not a child had the DTP-Hib at 3 months.

Same with schools, only it's a different lot of people. They already let us all know when our children reach school age. And actually, in law, it is THE PARENTS' responsibility to ensure their children receive an appropriate education, in school or otherwise - it's not actually the responsibility of the state, in law, at all.

If it's not good enough for the children of Madonna and MP's, it's not good enough for my children.

The database was actually a recommendation of the Laming report following a review of the death of Victoria Climbe.

Part of the reason that her great aunt managed to go undetected was because Victoria was seen in hospitals in different boroughs in London and also moved house between boroughs to evade further investigation.

A national database would prevent this from happening - The information would be available to any social services department, police force and health setting.

High profile people would have their children's data recorded on there but it would be set to a higher access code than other records. This is what happens already with education, health and council records. You need to have a high enough clearance to view those records (usually management or senior management)

But the SW's doing their job would also have prevented the Climbie affair happening.

Without affecting the civil liberties of everyone else in the country.

The family moved through three different boroughs with 3 different sets of social workers, she was also seen at a number of hospitals and by a few police officers.

It wasn't any one groups fault, all of them could have done better and should have done better but saying that the social workers doing their job would mean that this database wouldn't be necessary is an over simplistic and red top attitude.

oh let's not get caught up in the sw doing their job debate.

it's irrelevant.

agree with edam.

it's a complete and utter lack of civil liberties. children born into the state and tagged.

a load of out of our control bollocks that i for one do not wish my child to be any part of.

unfortunately i'm only a parent who seemingly has less and less say this day.

anyone who agrees with it should join their local herd of sheep.

Yeah, what LittleBella said. Both times.

It's just like the way the Eunice Spry fostering scandal is being used as ammunition in arguing for increased regulation of home education. The woman "HE'd" her charges in between abusing them disgustingly, so LEAs are arguing that more scrutiny of HEers is required. But all of the procedures are in place to stop foster parents from abusing their charges in revolting ways - it just requires social services to do their jobs and follow those procedures.

Further legal powers to LEAs will infringe the civil liberties of thousands of families in order to disguise the shortcomings of those working within a system which already has the safeguards in place, if only the people involved were competent. Exactly the same: the children's index will infringe the civil liberties of every child in this country but wouldn't have saved Victoria Climbie. The umpteen people who did nothing to help her, even though they already had the power and the responsibility, they are the ones who should be looking at their working practices.

[steps off soap box]

Oh, I wish I'd written the post nightshade just made

oooh i think my head has just swollen emma!

There's also the issue that children are flagged-up for further investigation by social services if a teacher/health professional considers them at risk. Sounds sensible, except that the things that trigger a flagging-up can be declining immunisation, booking a homebirth or whatever the informant likes really. The worry is that this will lead to thousands of families being investigated needlessly whilst those children who are really at risk get lost in the huge backlog that would result.

The proposals I saw didn't even mean teachers/SWs/HVs/Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all had to consider a child 'at risk' to flag them up. Just record 'a concern' which could be, e.g., a breastfeeding mother who refuses her daft HV's advice to 'top up' a big baby, or to wean at four months. Plenty of examples of that sort of rubbishy 'advice' on MN. Then a few months later that baby falls off a sofa and bingo, two flags = case conference. FGS!

OK then, if all the people involved had done their jobs properly.

As you say, it was a catalogue of failings. If all the people involved had done their jobs properly, without a database, it wouldn't have happened.

There, I'm not picking on any one group now.
And Daisymoo makes an extremely important point - because the dbase flags up things as automatic, HV's, SW's etc, will be caught up in box ticking exercises which will eat up time and resources.

They can feck right off-it's ID cards via the back door.

Dead right, Sugarfree, it means that by the time today's children are adults, a national identity database will be a fait accompli. With no public discussion or debate.