SAY NO TO CONTACTPOINT-LETS PROTECT OUR CHILDREN-SIGN PETITION plz

[StudentMadwife]

Ok, not sure if anyone has heard about contactpoint. It has been rolled out on trial in various places across the uk but now it is to be implemented in some areas as soon as the end of april.

The LA will be holding our children on database till they are 18, this is to enable more effective multi-agaency working and to identify kids who need extra services.

children will go on the database at birth and children that are now under 18 will be put straight on from info gathered from schools, doctors YOT's, CAFCAS, CBA and others to build a "picture" of that young person.

I am seriously concerned about this. There has been NO public consultation and NO consent from exsisting parents.

How are we supposed to trust the goverment with our childrens details of their lives when in the last 2 yrs there have been several HUGE security breaches and information has been "lost".

I am concerned that the goverment has kept this scheme under wraps and that everyone I ask has never heard about it. As far as im aware the only people who have some extensive knowledge about it are social services.

PLEASE PLEASE sign the petition and get this stopped, or at the very least temporarily halted.

petitions.pm.gov.uk/ChildDB/

Thanks!

What me, you tawlking bout me love??

Do you know that no one has actually ever been on the moon and Lady Di was knocked off by MI5 and aliens once landed in a desert in the US??

"You carry others dna on you, when you shake hands the other persons DNA passes onto your hand, the person you shook hands with you could then rob a bank
or murder someone and your DNA would be there, even though you had nothing to do with it.".

Don't you think that if it was that simple bank robbers and murderers would have been doing it for years? "here shake my hand... oops now you're a murder suspect."

I was actually abducted by aliens.
They stole some of my DNA to clone a million criminals out robbing banks.
I've had to install CCTV in my home to prove I have an alibi every minute of the day.
Tis true.

you were only abducted? I am one of them. one of the aliens.

Yeah and one of them shook my hand and I am writing this courtesy of HMP Belmarsh thanks to you you evil cloned bitch alien!

"It is not quite as easy as just signing on to a public forum, spouting some opinions and then retreating because some posters are questioning your opinions..."

ermm I havent retreated for a start, secondly If people dont agree with my opinion thats fine, thats THEIR choice. The fact is there are alot of people who dont know anything about it and may wish to sign.

Aplogies for laughing, it was not the correct response. If your not sure what the problem is about id cards, then as I said, you probably havent looked into it enough-and if you do know the ins and outs of it and your still happy, thats your choice.

"The fact is there are alot of people who dont know anything about it and may wish to sign."

So people should sign your petition against it because they don't know anything about it?

More information on concerns over Contactpoint, here

I've just signed it; I don't like this sort of thing because I've read 1984 and I don't think Winston Smith was the bad guy (unlike the Gov. who obviously did).

Not allowed to sign anything - you know what happens to your details when you do - who can see all that stuff on the tinternet??????????

What if you are actually someone employed by Mr Brown to gather names and addresses against his dastardly sheme and he is going to come and kill us all when we sign!
God can you tell I am sleepy and bored???

Sorry am off now to ruin another serious thread with my mischeif - you coming Wannabe and Vicky Squalor (now wouldn;t that be a great name for a comedy character!!)

Oooh, look at that

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

The child?s name, gender, date of birth and address

An identification number for the child

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

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

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

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

That is the same as a persons hospital records, plus the details of their school. Not exactly new fangled.

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

What is wrong with that? I don't see a problem, they have all this info anyway, just spread out over different services and repeated in each place. The basic family's entry will be very basic. If you use other services, for a disability maybe, then at least everyone can see, instead of the big explanation we have to give to each service. I'm suprised it isn't already in place

And the government holds most of that info as we all claim child benefit

Thankyou juuule

I think the problem is that this frog is already boiled, studentmadwife.

I feel that I should worry about it, but as the others have said, the information is all there already. I'm ready to be convinced though.

Sorry - have just read juule's link. Will sign.

What will this database cost to maintain?

And I think this has more to do with not trusting the government to responsible with our data than it does to suggest the whole thing is a bad idea.

I tend to agree that the goverment has not proven themselves trustworthy in recent times.

And they certainly don't have a track record of on schedule within budget IT installations (i.e. the NHS).

I wrote a long and involved answer to this, and them my computer crashed twice on the trot.

"The police already have tons of peoples fingerprints/DNA on file, they get a match, go and pick up the person it matches with and then take a new sample so if the one on file is messed up it will be discovered PDQ."

Tell that to Shirley McKie.

"In fact I think this whole scheme was designed after the report into the death of Victoria Climbié when Lord Laming concluded that her murder could have been prevented by better communication between professionals."

It was. The problem I have is that I've read the Laming Report and the mistakes that were made were silly little mistakes one after the other. People couldn't be bothered to write things down, or wrote it down and filed it without telling anyone, or were too busy to tell other peopple their suspicions, then left and forgot about it, assuming someone else would pick up the pieces. I fail to see why a giant techno sticking plaster will help these farily fundamental problems. Laming seems to have fallen into the belief that 'computers can make things better' which is wrong. People can make things better, and they can use ICt to help. On it's own, a big IT project is just a lot of money on consultants, and very little else (much like most of the other big government IT projects).

"I don't care about ID cards either - don't see what the big issue is with them - would be same as having to carry driving license IMO.

Other countries have ID cards why are the British so against it?"

Ummm... the London School of Economics did a study into the likely costs of the ID scheme which said this:

"The likely cost of rolling out the UK government's current high-tech identity cards scheme will be £10.6 billion on the 'low cost' estimate of researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), without any cost over-runs or implementation problems. Key uncertainties over how citizens will behave and how the scheme will work out in practice mean that the 'high cost' estimate could go up to £19.2 billion. A median figure for this range is £14.5 billion."

"If all the costs associated with ID cards were borne by citizens (as Treasury rules currently require), the cost per card (plus passport) would be around £170 on the lowest cost basis and £230 on the median estimate."

The then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, described this as 'a complete nonsense figure'.

I know who has less of a vested interest in lying about the costs; and it's not the LSE...

Excellent points, Kevlar. EVERY major computer project the government has commissioned has been a spectacular failure.

Victoria Climbie wasn't killed by a lack of IT, the poor girl. She could have been saved had any one of the dozens of professions she met actually been awake and bothered to do their job properly.

my dd is already on masses of lists and stuff as she has cp. so doesn't bother me.

I think it will fail ultimately we have had data bases for so many things and they are often over looked or used wrongly

I dont know anything about this database but we have all kinds of records held about us from the moment we are born

I would be worried about who had access to it - so would a future employer be able to see how my children behaved in school?-
would you have an opt out choice?

I will not though ever carry an ID card I would rather go to court I am not a militant person by any means but I would leave England if they ever bought in identy cards - if they do I will be one being arrested

you chose to drive so you get a license you choose to go abroad so you have to have a passport I do not choose to carry a card around with me

Rant over

that's the point, peanut bear - the ID card itself is bad enough but the REAL issue is the massive database they are creating.

It's a huge gift to ID fraudsters - and there is no computer system that can't be hacked.

ID cards in other countries are not based on this kind of universal, complex database, carrying every single bit of information about an individual. And accessible by thousands of people - who on earth do you think is maintaining it and putting all these bits of information on? Is every single admin assistant in the public sector conscientious and beyond reproach every single second of their working day?

if there's a fuck up, it will be down to us to prove they have got it wrong. Imagine how hard your bloody life might be if they've got you mixed up with someone else.

And it's a fundamental change in the relationship between citizen and state. All UK law is based on the idea that we are free to do whatever is not specifically proscribed. If there's no law against it, you can do it. This reverses that - we are all treated as potential suspects.

Contactpoint is essentially just a way of doing this without gaining proper consent. Because by the time our children grow up, it will be a fait accompli.

I have nothing to hide. But a great deal to lose - my privacy. Signed.