John Carvel and
David Batty
Tuesday September 9, 2003
The Guardian
Every child in England will
be given a unique identifying number attached to an electronic file of personal
information about their lives, under plans announced yesterday to avoid a
repetition of the murder of Victoria Climbié.
The eight-year-old from the Ivory Coast
died in London in 2000 after months of torture and malnutrition. Her carers
were jailed for life, but a public inquiry under Lord Laming identified at
least 12 occasions when she might have been saved by social workers, police or
NHS staff if they had been aware of each others' suspicions.
The proposal came as part of a wide-ranging
package of reforms, announced by Tony Blair, including plans to appoint an
independent children's commissioner to champion their rights.
To tighten the child protection net, a
sophisticated tracking system to keep tabs on England's 11 million children has
been proposed.
In 150 local authorities, where education
and children's social services are to be merged into new children's
departments, there will be a "local information hub" recording
details of all the children living in the area.
Each will have a file including name,
address, date of birth, school and GP. When a child is known to agencies such
as education welfare, social services, police, or youth offending teams, the
file will carry a flag, giving contact details of the professional dealing with
the case. If the child is known to more than one agency, the file will state
which professional takes overall responsibility.
The green paper said there was a strong
case for allowing staff to register suspicions about a child's circumstances
before the stage when intervention was appropriate.
"It would be a matter of professional
judgment whether the combination of two or more flags of minor concern
warranted some form of action."
The government said it "wants to
prevent situations where a child does not receive the help they need because of
too rigid an interpretation of the privacy of the child and their family".
It will consult on whether information
could be included in files without consent of the child or carers and whether
it could include "warning signs" within the family such as
imprisonment, domestic violence, or mental health problems.
The paper proposes early legislation to
remove legal and technical barriers to information sharing, allowing children
to be tracked around the country when families move.
The civil liberties campaign group Liberty
warned that such a national database could put people falsely accused of child
abuse at risk of threats and blackmail if the information was not secure.
"It will become a bank of information
about every family in the land. At the very least we will want cast iron
guarantees that the only people with access to it are directly involved in
child protection," said Barry Hugill, the group's spokesman.
At local authority level, education and
children's social services will be amalgamated. By 2006 they will be expected
to set up children's trusts to link up with the NHS and other agencies.
Francis and Berthe Climbié, the parents of
Victoria, said the government was making progress, but regretted that it had
not adopted Lord Laming's plan for a national agency for children and families.
Lord Laming called the green paper a
"stimulating and imaginative" document but said it would take money
and a lot of training for social workers, teachers and police to work.
Margaret Hodge, the children's minister,
said the reforms might save money by avoiding duplication of work and
intervening before problems escalated.
David Behan, president of the Association
of Directors of Social Services, said: "This sets the scene for strong
leadership, clear accountability and tighter coordination between local
authorities and partner agencies."