Children's Databases 1 of 3

CONTACTPOINT :This is the first in a series of three films looking at UK government plans for two national children's databases: Contactpoint and eCAF.

Contactpoint, sometimes called the 'Children's Index', 'Information Sharing Index' or 'Children's Database', will be a central identity register of every under-18 in England together with details of all of the services that they use. Its cousin, the eCAF database will contain in-depth personal assessments of children and young people using any service other than basic education and health care -- that's around 50% of under-18s.

Together with information security experts, child protection specialists and children's rights advocates, ARCH has spent the last 4 years trying to get the government to understand that large, centralised databases of children's private information are a dangerous and misguided idea. These films explain why.

The cast list includes Professor Ross Anderson, Dr Ian Brown, Dr Liz Davies, Shami Chakrabarti and Terri Dowty. We are very grateful to Kate Munro for all the work she put into making the films, and to Glyn Wintle of the Open Rights Group for converting them into the right format.

For more information about Contactpoint, eCAF and other children's databases see: http://www.arch-ed.org/issues/databases/databases.htm

In 2006 the Foundation for Information Policy Research produced a full report for the Information Commissioner, 'Children's Databases: Safety and Privacy'. This can be downloaded from: http://www.fipr.org/press/061122kids.html

If you are a practitioner with concerns about eCAF, you can contact us at: http://www.ecafalert.org.uk/

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Contactpoint
• children
• children's
• index
• database
• surveillance
• information-sharing
• datasharing
• documentary

[UKDirtySecret]

Youtube

'child stealing by the state' Brian Gerrish common purpose

to find out what they dont want you to know in the UK

[robinoi]

how will it be safer?

[simininja]

Parents cannot remove their children from it completely, but they can also request shielding as well as access to their childs information to ensure it is all correct

[simininja]

Any lieas dreamt up by teachers would be kept on the child's case record, which would be held by either the school or the social worker if they have one and would go nowhere near ContactPoint. There will not be any case notes on ContactPoint. Parents and Children deemed mature enough can request acces to their records on ContcatPoint, they can also request for it to be changed if it is wrong.

[simininja]

Actually it's estimated that there will be around 330,000 people able to view ContactPoint. Any contact with drugs would be under the sensitive services area and would require clearance from the organisation confirmed before they could view it. This is the same for mental and sexual health.

[joosyjulie]

Contact point will be open to 500,000 people. All of them will have CRB checks, which only prove that they HAVEN'T BEEN CAUGHT YET. How many of that 500,000 will be peadophiles?

The childs name, address, school (what if home educating), open to anyone with acess, ANY contact with drugs, hospital records, any lies dreamt up by teacher's to cover their own backs (open to a higher level of security) and NONE of it removable by the parents even if blatently wrong.

[simininja]

are you suggesting we dont have a sex offender's register?

[simininja]

Police information will not be held on ContactPoint, neither will any explisite information. It will literally be the name adress and gender of the child. The parents details and their school; Contact details for any other professionals working with them, unless they are sensitive services, in which case it will simply state sensitive services. A lead professional will be stated and any communication will be through them.

[simininja]

ContactPoint is very secure, it will also hold little more information than there Doctor's surgery or school as and will be a damn site safer. Baby P was failed by a lack of communication, how else do you suggest we solve the problem?

[simininja]

To be fair, there are parents out there that will continually abuse their children. Yes there have been mistakes, and I am by no means saying that all social workers get it right every time, after all they are only human. It must be acknowledged however that there are alot of bad parents out there, and of course when they have been found once they will need to be examined with each child to decipher whether they have ceased their abusive behaviour or not.