ContactPoint

What is it?

ContactPoint is a secure national database set up to improve the wellbeing of children. It is a quick way to find out who else is working with the same child or young person, making it easier to provide more coordinated support and improve outcomes for children. It is a national requirement from the Children Act 2004, which means all local authorities across England have to take part. Every child and young person in England from birth until their 18^th birthday will appear in the database. ContactPoint has been developed in response to recommendation of Lord Laming's inquiry into the tragic death of Victoria Climbié.

The ContactPoint project is being led by the DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families) and Regional Implementation Coordinators are in place to support local authority staff with the implementation of ContactPoint.

Worcestershire County Council is responsible for the implementation of ContactPoint within Worcestershire and it is our responsibility to support other partner agencies in getting the data up and running.

What Information will be held on ContactPoint?

ContactPoint will only hold simple information such as:

Name Gender Date of birth Address Parent / Carer contact details GP Health visitor Education/School Any additional involvements e.g. Youth Worker, Social Worker, SENCO.

In most cases, a child's record will be archived when they turn 18. Records of some young adults may stay on ContactPoint until they are 25, but only for very limited reasons and only with consent from that young adult. A record will be held in a secure archive for six years and then destroyed. The archive can only be accessed for limited reasons, such as investigations over a child's care.

Why has ContactPoint been developed?

As a result of Lord Laming's 2003 report into the death of Victoria Climbié, a number of recommendations led to the development of the Every Child Matters program. http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/aims/

One of the recommendations from Lord Laming's 2003 report was that the Government looks into the feasibility of a database covering all children, providing basic identifying details and contact details for practitioners and services involved with the child.

At the moment practitioners can waste a lot of time trying to find out who else is working with the same child. Practitioners working with a child need to know about each other and talk to each other, so that they can provide the right support quickly for a child, before problems become more serious.

Why do all children in England have to be on ContactPoint?

Between 3 and 4 million children and young people in England may need extra support at any one time, but no-one knows exactly which children are going to need support or when they will need it. The purpose of ContactPoint is to help make sure all children and young people can get extra support if and when they need it. ContactPoint can also help to make sure that every child is being educated (whether at school or home) and is registered with a doctor (or has access to medical help).

How will ContactPoint benefit children?

ContactPoint will help professionals to contact a parent/carer and each other if a child needs support. If professionals working with a child know about each other they can:

• make sure that every child is getting the correct support they need;
• ensure that the child has the right support quickly, before problems get more serious;
• work together, which means that a child or a family doesn’t have to explain the same things lots of different times; and
• make sure they are not duplicating work already being done by others.

Children, young people and families should always be at the centre of what is happening and have a say in the services and support they get.  Please see Kelly's story in the useful documents, as an example of how ContactPoint will benefit children.

How will it work?

The idea is that partner agencies will be able to access ContactPoint and work more effectively together. It will allow them to contact each other if they are working with the same child or young person. Practitioners will then be in a position to share the most up-to-date and accurate information about a child. The aim is to ensure the child or young person receives the best possible service(s) to meet their needs.

Where will the information come from?

ContactPoint will initially be populated by national data sources from Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Department of Health (DoH). In time, this data will then be enriched by feeding ContactPoint with data from local systems used by staff in the Children’s Services Directorate as well as local systems operated by partner agencies. The information from all these difference sources will combine in ContactPoint to create the 'best view' child record.

Nationally, data management tools will be used to remove duplicates from the main ContactPoint database and the data will be cleansed from different sources.

Once the database is ‘live’ to practitioners it will be refreshed by automated data feeds from the national and local data providers.

Although these information sources provide information for ContactPoint about a child, they are not able to extract information back from ContactPoint, meaning that any information in ContactPoint is kept strictly confidential.