Tory Party Conference: Call for national tracking system for children

Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, the chief executive of Birmingham Council, Mark Rodgers, and the chair of the education select committee, Neil Carmichael, both said it is time to establish a way of monitoring the movement of children more effectively.

Rodgers, who was previously a director of children's services at Solihull Council, said: "We should have a nationally specified system in order that there is consistency across the country, administered locally through agreements between agencies and across borders to be able to track all children effectively.

The previous Labour government did introduce a database system, known as Contactpoint, in the wake of the Victoria Climbié child abuse scandal to improve child protection, but it was scrapped by the coalition government in 2010.

It held the names, ages and addresses of all under-18s on a central computerised database, along with the contact details of their parents, schools and GPs. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers and social workers had access to it.

"Whether Contactpoint was ever the right solution in itself, there have been efforts made in the past to get to something that is set out nationally that's delivered locally - and we should go back to something like that," Rodgers said.

"The risk of losing children through gaps is still too great - and that is something I possibly would legislate, certainly regulate for."

Carmichael said children should be registered through education action settings.

"I think all children should be registered properly as to where they are," he said.

"I think the obvious place [to do it] would be education. There is a need to know where children are, and by extension, who they are with, and what they are doing."

However, Helen Bailey, who took over as chief executive at public services consultancy firm Impower in August, said a national system will not improve information sharing.

"I don't think any of us would disagree that however you structure child protection services, there should be better sharing of information - both across agencies within a place, and between places," she said.

"Sadly, my own experience does not encourage me to believe that just because you have set something up on a national basis, it will be particularly good at sharing that information.

"In general, this about better information sharing protocols, not a national system."