Tuesday 27 January 2009

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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8 comments:

  1. This is surely driven by reaction to Victoria Climbie and Baby p's deaths, among too many others.
    It does not in my mind reflect anything deliberately sinister, but it is more than a pity that there is no proactive approach from the government, merely reactive legislation.

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  2. I think it is very sinister indeed. How naive do you have to be to think that such a register- which basically identifies every vulnerable child in the country - will be used only for 'good'. Can we trust politicians to know what that is?

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  3. Nothing to hide - nothing to fear. I'd trust the government with details of my identity before I'd trust you.

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  4. Anonymous, one day I might just be one of the people from the voluntary organizations allowed access to the database - and you don't know who else will have access!

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  5. Who will have access?

    Most rail communters?

    Darren Moore
    Tranmere

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  6. Check out the website, Darren. The truth is, it could be all sorts of unspecified people.

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  7. see nouslife.blog on a similar issue a few posts ago (23rd Jan)- also makes for interesting reading

    Rachel

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  8. I know. I was being a bit tongue in cheek after twice serious amounts of confidential information has been left on trains by civil servants. The less info they have the less they can (accidently) reveal.

    I used to agree with Anonymous no.2, so had no problems with things held on record, CCTV etc. But when you put it together with other things said by those in authority it becomes very worrying. E.g. About parents teaching their own children about creation and God, free-speach about saying certain views are wrong (particular the homosexual lobby and Islam).

    They are far from rounding us up, but the instruments are in place. They can monitor which meetings we go to, who our kids are and so on.

    It may sound alarmist as we do enjoy great freedom. But having spoken to elderly Germans they tell me that there are some frightening similarities. In particular how people are valued (unborn, elderly and disabled) and how we view life, distrust between parent and child encouraged (report smoking and smacking), monitoring movement, what you can & can't say. They point out Germany was remarkably free and tolerant while all these things were coming into place and then...

    Darren Moore
    Tranmere

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