National child database will increase risk

The government makes much of the need to 'protect' children by setting up lots of databases to enable data sharing between professionals (although this label includes some 390,000 people)

Eileen Munro wrote in the Guardian newspaper that 'Children's welfare is best protected by by having competent and well resourced professionals not with computer wizardry'

The tragic death of Victoria Climbié is being used as a Trojan horse by the government to rush through an unpopular policy in the children bill. It is strange for the government to present the proposed electronic database on all 11 million children in England and Wales as a way of preventing the kind of mistakes made in Victoria's care.

Her case was mishandled because staff misunderstood the information they had, not because they could not share information. When there are concerns about abuse, confidentiality can be broken, and needs to be broken because we cannot trust abusive parents to tell the truth about what they are doing to the child.

It has now emerged that the idea of the database predates the Climbié report by at least a year and was not initially linked to child abuse. It was suggested in a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit at the Cabinet Office - Privacy and data-sharing: The Way Forward for the Public Services.

READ MORE at:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/apr/06/childrensservices.comment