Magna Carta, my ****!

Imagine living in a society where the details of every child, and their parents or carers, was held on a central government database which could be accessed by an unspecified range of ‘interested parties’ including, but not necessarily confined to, those working in education, health, social care and law enforcement, but also unspecified ‘voluntary organisations’.

The point of this database? The public reason is so that, should the child be 'at risk', anyone in any of these organizations can quickly know who else is working with them:

“... if a professional believes a child is at risk they may have no immediate way of knowing whether other services are already in contact with that child. The Government believes a fully operational system could save at least 5 million hours of professionals’ time, currently wasted trying to track down who else, if anyone, is helping the child.”

But no evidence is given for this belief, nor does it say whether it is per week, month, year or decade that this 570 years of non-stop work is ‘wasted’, nor does it say who these ‘professionals’ are — whether they are GPs or secretarial staff.

Every child must therefore be registered. However, if a child is in an ‘at risk’ category, “children with particular vulnerable circumstances, such as children from families on police protection schemes, or where one parent has been the victim of domestic abuse, or in certain cases where the child has been adopted,” their records will be “shielded”.

Children from secure homes and backgrounds will, however, have their full records accessible to the users.

Imagine it? You’re already in it.

John Richardson
27 January 2009

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