However, people are not nearly as comfortable with the idea of adatabase containing records of every child in Britain and their contactwith professionals, which is essentially what the information sharingindex is. The extent of this discomfort is becoming increasinglyapparent, with the result that children's minister Beverley Hughes wasprompted to write to The Daily Telegraph last week to try to calm thingsdown.
This disquiet is turning into mounting political opposition following anindication by the Government that it is thinking of linking thechildren's index to the National Identity Register, the database thatwill support identity cards.
It is unlikely that any political opposition will block the creation ofthe child index. However, there is a very real possibility that theoriginal, laudable purpose of the system - to ensure that no child isleft lagging far behind on any of the five key outcomes set out in EveryChild Matters - will be subverted if it becomes bogged down in politicalwrangling and other agendas.
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