CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 18 (2004) pp. 383–386Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/CHI.849

Information Sharing andAssessment (ISA): CanData Management ReduceRisk?

Why have a children’s database?

One of the central recommendations made in the inquiry intothe death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie (Department ofHealth/Home Office, 2003) referred to the establishment of anational database to include information on every child underthe age of 16. The Chair of that inquiry, Lord Laming, alsorecommended that the government issue guidance on howdata protection law and confidentiality protocols may impacton the sharing of information between professionals in caseswhere they have concerns about a child’s welfare. The inquiryalso recognised that even basic information about childrenwho came to the attention of various professionals often goesunrecorded, and that this situation must change.

The inadequacies of information sharing both within andacross agencies has been an enduring theme in severalinvestigations into child deaths. But these reports alsoacknowledge that deficiencies in information collection andretrieval are not unique to child protection interventions. Theimportance of being able to access up-to-date information isalso a key ingredient in the government’s attempts to re-focusmainstream children’s services on prevention. The issues arefamiliar: either critical information is not being recorded, filesare unavailable or inaccessible, contact details are out of date,or professionals fail to make links between incidents thatshould have warned them that something is not quite right inthat child’s life.

The green paper Every Child Matters (Department of Educa-tion and Skills, 2003) proposed that each local authorityestablish a local information hub that provided basic detailson each child living in the area, and allowed any professionalwho came into contact with that child to ‘flag’ a concern onthe system that would be visible to the next agency orpractitioner who met with the child, and lead to the mostappropriate form of action.

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Policy

Review

Lisa PaynePrincipal Policy Officer,National Children’sBureau, 8 Wakley Street,London EC1V 7QE

Correspondence to: Lisa Payne,

Principal Policy Officer, National

Children’s Bureau, 8 Wakley

Street, London EC1V 7QE. E-mail:

lpayne@ncb.org.uk

In order to take forward the idea, the government decided to focus on the followingprocess issues:

� Removing legal barriers that might prevent information sharing;� Resolving technical problems that block information transfer beyond local authority

boundaries;� Improving joint working between organisations in part through the creation of

integrated children’s services; and� Eliminating professional and cultural barriers through the introduction of common core

training for the children’s workforce and the development of a common assessmentframework.

The Children Bill proposals

The development of Information Sharing and Assessment (ISA) is anchored by twooverarching sections in the Children Bill—soon to be the Children Act 2004. There is a newrequirement for a children’s services authority (in essence, local authority education andsocial services) to make arrangements to promote cooperation at a strategic level betweenitself and a list of partners including police, probation, the Youth Offending Team, health,and the Connexions Service. In addition, each of these partner bodies is under a duty toensure that its functions and services are provided with a view to safeguarding andpromoting the welfare of children and young people.

In order to promote these partnerships and fulfil their safeguarding duties, the ChildrenBill requires children’s services authorities in England and Wales to establish and operateinformation databases, and allows for the establishment of regional or nationalinformation database(s).

The only information that the databases will contain will be: the child’s name, address,gender, date of birth, a unique identifying number, name and contact details of any personwith parental responsibility or day-to-day care of the child, education provider (whetherat home, school, or children’s centre) and primary care provider (such as, doctor or healthvisitor). The data record should also include a flag to indicate that a professional workingwith the child has a ‘cause for concern’, but what constitutes a cause for concern is leftundefined. The government suggests that any decision about whether or not a concernexists should remain one for professional judgment. All children and young people up tothe age of 19 who reside in that area will be included in the database.

Individuals accessing the system will be required to have Criminal Records Bureauclearance; they will have to sign a practitioner-level protocol; and undertake training onthe safe and secure use of the system including compliance with the Data Protection Act1998, Human Rights Act 1998, and the Caldicott principles that underpin the healthservices’ use of patient-identifiable information. The Children Bill allows professionalsto override the common law duty of confidentiality when information regarding a childis placed on the database. However, since the purpose of placing such informationwould be to ensure that professionals are aware of issues of concern that place a child atrisk, the common law duty would prevail once contact had been made betweenpractitioners.

384 Lisa Payne

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 18, 383–386 (2004)

The government intends that children and young people and their parents will beinformed that ISA databases are being set up, how they work, and in broad terms whatinformation will be held on them. Although their consent to the inclusion of the child’sdetails on the database would be preferable, it is not mandatory; a refusal to consent maybe disregarded where disclosure is required by law.

However, the new arrangements do not bypass current rules that protect people of anyage. Under the Data Protection Act, subjects will continue to have a right to accessinformation held on them, object to inaccuracies, be informed of the purposes for whichthe information will be used, and be told when the information will be deleted.

Information sharing pilots

The system is being tested before full implementation of the new law. In 2002/3 and 2003/4, ten Trailblazer pilots comprising 15 local authorities were allocated £1 million todevelop an electronic information sharing system, originally called Identification, Referraland Tracking (IRT), but now dubbed ISA. All other authorities were granted £100,000 toassist in their own development of an ISA system. Two reports on their progress so farhave been issued (Cleaver and others, 2004a; Cleaver and others, 2004b).

The overall aim of the pilot is to improve communication and information sharingbetween health, education and social care—though other agencies such as youth justicecan also take part.

Clear messages have already emerged: the need to involve the public and otherprofessionals in the development of the database; a warning not to let the technology drivethe initiative but treat it as a support to improving services for children; the benefits ofsetting up the ISA system with input from a multi-agency team to provide individualprofessional perspectives and champion the system to their sector; and the challengesinherent in working in partnership with other agencies.

But it is too soon to ascertain whether having an ISA system does improve communicationbetween professionals, create a shared understanding based on the use of a commonassessment framework, encourage a more rapid response to tackle a situation of risk, andmake certain that children and their families are in receipt of services to which they areentitled—or ensure that the services are locally available.

Conclusion

Despite the lengthy parliamentary debates and public consultations, several issues remainoutstanding in relation to information sharing.

The new laws leave far too much detail to guidance and regulations that will applyto individuals and agencies across a huge spectrum of activity—potentially anyonein the statutory or voluntary sectors who works with children and young people, orthose who offer services that impact on children and young people (such as sociallandlords).

Information Sharing and Assessment 385

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 18, 383–386 (2004)

The ‘cause for concern’ has no threshold criteria. Professional groups work to diversedefinitions and laws; they have no shared understanding of what might constitute a‘concern’. This could result in minor issues being flagged leading to an overlarge volumeof information on the database, and too many false positives requiring filtering anddecision-making. It may divert professional energies from real concerns.

It is unclear what can and cannot be considered confidential, and under whatcircumstances. Health practitioners and child advocates have expressed unease regardingthe impact this may have on the willingness of children to approach them for help, and thepatient/practitioner bond.

There are issues relating to who can input and retrieve information. The children’sworkforce is estimated at four million in England alone—is it realistic to use staff vettingprocedures to ensure that the system is secure? Experience shows us that we cannot makeassumptions about the safety and good intentions of all adults working in children’sservices.

The establishment and maintenance of databases is an expensive business. The rationalefor establishing the system is sound, but in the end, ISA is simply a technical tool andcannot alone solve the types of practice failures highlighted in the Climbie Inquiry.Though it may improve the likelihood of a correct decision being made in cases where achild might be at risk, it cannot make the decision.

References

Cleaver H, Barnes J, Bliss D, Cleaver D. 2004a. Developing Identification, Referral and Trackingsystems: an evaluation of the processes undertaken by trailblazer authorities interim report.Department for Education and Skills.

Cleaver H, Cleaver D, Cleaver D, Woodhead V. 2004b. Information Sharing and Assessment: theprogress of non-trailblazer local authorities. Department for Education and Skills.

Department for Education and Skills. 2003. Every Child Matters. The Stationery Office: London.Department of Health/Home Office. 2003. The Victoria Climbie Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by LordLaming. The Stationery Office: London.

Contributor’s details

Lisa Payne is Principal Policy Officer at the National Children’s Bureau.

386 Lisa Payne

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 18, 383–386 (2004)