CYP Now - Editorial: Information sharing must not be subverted

The public has been largely supportive of the Every Child Matters agenda, and the Government has been easily able to hold it up as an example of successful Labour policy. People have also been generally supportive when they have been told of the information sharing culture that much of the reforms are geared towards creating.

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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