Introduction to ContactPoint
Legislation has been passed requiring Local Authorities to set up and run a nationwide database which will contain basic details about every child and young person under the age of 18 who is ordinarily resident in England. This database is to be known as ContactPoint.
Alongside the child's demographic information, it will contain the name and contact details of professionals working with them, creating in effect each child's personal "telephone directory". The Department of Children Schools and Families is keen to stress that it will not contain any case information or free text - apart from the 128 "characters" which the database permits for the description of each service provided to a child or young person.
The purpose of the database is said to be to enable practitioners working with children to find out quickly who is working with the same child. This is with a view to saving many wasted hours of practitioner time which can then be better spent in service delivery.
The Independent Schools Council (ISC) is opposed to the introduction of ContactPoint. It has lobbied vigorously against it since the inception of the idea on the basis that:
- it is an unjustified interference in the privacy of the majority of children and their carers
- it will put some children at risk through data theft or loss
- it will be a register of poor quality data which may create a misleading or unhelpful impression of the child
- it is unlikely to facilitate early intervention.
Nevertheless independent schools will shortly be required to provide pupil data to Local Authorities for the database.
Stage One - Building the database
It is important to note that the basic database (consisting only of names, addresses, dates of birth and contact details for parents, G.P.s and state schools) has already been drawn together from national databases under government control, for example, the national register of births, national health service, child benefit and maintained school rolls.
In due course, independent schools will be required to give the Local Authority similar data about all our pupils who are ordinarily resident in England, including the contact details of each of their parents (addresses and mobile phone numbers) and adding this school as their educational setting. As mentioned, most children will already be on the database on account of being on the government controlled databases mentioned above. The data from independent schools will mainly serve to update old data, and add the educational setting of pupils and the additional services they receive.
Schools will be required to provide the data at times to be specified by the Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families. It is not yet clear how often this will be but will be at least annually and is likely to be termly or more often. Some documents we have seen indicate that local authorities will be seeking updates each half term.
No date or schedule of times for disclosure has yet been specified. When this occurs we will advise ISC schools to alert parents and send them a copy of the data they intend to disclose about their children to check. Schools will assume that pupils, whether day or boarding, are ordinarily resident at their parents' address. Where addresses for both parents are in England, they will assume that pupils are ordinarily resident in England. Where a school has an address outside of England for at least one parent, schools will ask parents to indicate the residency status of their child and be guided by the response.
Stage Two - Shielding
We are told that the database is now "live" for a small group (400) of professionals in early adopter areas in the north west of England. Before it is rolled out any further, local authorities are now "shielding" the details of children and adults who could otherwise be put at risk. Data which is "shielded will still be held on the system but will only be accessible in an emergency. "Shielding" is undertaken on a case by case basis by the local authority implementation team. If you wish to apply for your details to be shielded, you can apply now. Because all authorities have access to the national database, it should not matter whether you apply to your own authority or that where your child's school is situated.
Stage three - "Go live"
When the database goes "live" nationwide for practitioner use, around October 2009, it is estimated by the DCSF that it will be accessible by in the region of 390,000 professionals who work with children. (Others have estimated that it will be accessed by many more.) These could include, for example, social workers, hospital doctors, police, youth offending teams, family support workers and specified employees in schools. All those who access the database will require enhanced CRB checks at three-yearly intervals and will have to undergo training and accreditation for security purposes.
While all schools have to give data about pupils, it is not compulsory for schools to access the data. This is a decision for each school. Those schools which decide to be ContactPoint users will be obliged to comply with rigorous security. Many schools within the ISC member associations have indicated that they will not become users at this stage.
Stage four - Noting professional involvement
After ContactPoint goes live, professionals who provide additional services (also known as "specialist or targeted services") to children and young people will be required to log their involvement by noting their contact details against the name of the child on the database. Generally this will not require the consent of the pupil or their parent(s). The exception to this will be where the involvement relates to a "sensitive service".
A sensitive service is a service relating to sexual health, mental health or substance abuse. In the case of these services, professionals will need the express, informed consent of a child or young person to log the service unless they consider that there is reasonable cause to suspect that the child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. There is no provision in the ContactPoint regulations for parents to be able to consent on behalf of pupils to the logging of sensitive services.
Schools will likewise be required to log the contact details of professionals who provide school-based "specialist or targeted services" to children. These are defined widely to mean "any service which is not normally provided to all persons of a particular age group". There is no limit on what this might include. For example, attending an independent school falls within the definition as it is a service not normally provided to all persons. Additionally, many ISC schools provide many additional services relating to sports, music, recreational activities as well as those relating to extension of studies for the gifted and talented, learning support and the services of medical centres and counsellors.
There is no provision in the law, for schools to be able to use their discretion as to which services it is appropriate to log. The services which the DCSF are specifically asking schools to log are learning support, educational psychology, Education Welfare Service, Traveller Education Services, and those of the school nurse where the involvement of these services is more than trivial. They stress, however, that it is possible to record any service where the practitioners believe they should record their involvement.
ISC is concerned that children and young people should be able to continue to access services without fearing that a record will be made on a national database. There is also the concern that, as thresholds for accessing support are lower in ISC schools than in many others, to log individual involvements could create a false impression about pupils.
While DCSF encourages data suppliers to log additional services one by one against each pupil, ISC considers that it would be lawful for ISC schools to log the following statement for every pupil:
"For information about additional school-based services, if any, please contact [X]"
"X" should be a senior member of staff who is able to speak knowledgeably about the pupil if contacted by outside services, or refer to the relevant member of staff. Apart from the savings in time and bureaucracy and the avoidance of threshold decisions by individuals, this approach protects pupils by ensuring that issues are fielded in the first instance by someone with an overview of the child's various needs.
Alternatively, in some cases it will be appropriate for schools to take the individualized approach suggested by DCSF. This is a decision for each school.
For more information
More information is available on the Every Child Matters website
Parliamentary Questions and Answers
1 December 2009
30 November 2009
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3 November 2009
26 October 2009
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16 October 2009
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15 July 2009
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7 July 2009
30 June 2009
29 June 2009
24 June 2009
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17 June 2009
9 June 2009
29 May - 5 June 2009
January 2008 - May 2009
Early Day Motions
Written Ministerial Statements.
Report of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust