ContactPoint – safety in number?

Today, the UK government’s ContactPoint database goes live. Although initially the database will only be accessible to local authorities in the north west of England, the plan is to roll it out nationwide and permit just under 400,000 individuals to look at a raft of information about every child in the UK. Costing a quarter of a billion pounds to set up, the government has consistently argued that it will enable services for children to be coordinated and ensure that no child slips through the net.

ContactPoint will hold a raft of information about children in England, including their name, address, date of birth, health information including GP details and information about other professionals involved in providing care for a child.  Of particular significance to home educating families the database will hold  details about the child’s formal education provision.

Auditors, Deloitte and Touche published a report in 2007, however stating that the database could never be totally secure.  The government appears to acknowledge this since it has decided to shield the identities of over 50,000 who are regarded as particularly vulnerable.

Whilst some children’s charities have welcomes the new database, opposition political parties have been critical – the Liberal Democrats have called it “intrusive” and the Conservatives have raised concerns about security matters.

The Christian home education group, Home Service, has consistently opposed the implementation of ContactPoint, arguing that it will not achieve its objective of improving the connected-ness of children’s services nor will it improve the situation greatly for the thousands of children in England suffering abuse who are  already known to the local authorities.  In addition, Home Service has argued that the introduction of ContactPoint will rob home educators of their right to privacy. The currently legal position in England and wales is that most families are not required to notify the local authority of their decision to home educate their children.  ContactPoint will destroy this right because the database will each child’s school. This will enable local authorities and others to monitor home educating families in a way that was impossible previously and in a ay that current legislation does not require.

ContactPoint grew out of the desire to improve child safety in the aftermath of the death of Victoria Climbie. Will children in the north west be any safer today as a result of ContactPoint?  The tragic case of Baby P – where health care professionals and social workers were acutely aware of the child’s suffering but appeared to do nothing of substance to prevent it happening -  seems to suggest that the answer to this question is quite simply ‘No”!

“a better all round learning experience … attending school”

Over the weekend I was chatting with a teacher friend of mine about a 15 year old student that he has in his class who has severe learning difficulties, dyslexia and he has spent the whole of his secondary career learning to speak English as an additional language.  When asked questions in class he usually smiles and answers with just one or two words almost entirely unrelated to the correct answer; in exams his answers often consist of little more than words extracted from the question he is trying to answer. This young man is ‘statemented’, which means that his local authority has acknowledged that he has learning difficulties that are beyond the resources of his school to meet. Despite this, according to my friend, he has no additional resources allocated to him  – no teaching assistant sitting with him helping him understand what the teacher is saying or differentiating his work and for four years he has made little or no progress.

You may wonder why I have mentioned this young man in my home page news. Well, over the weekend I also read about the case of Elysha Robertson, a  seven year old in Rotherham who suffers from a disease related to motor neurone disease but so rare that doctors don’t even have a name for it. Elysha’s intellectual ability is unimpaired but the disease has robbed her of all movement from the waist up. She now communicates using her toes and is fed via a tube into her stomach.

Elysha’s mum withdrew her from a local special school because she felt that the school was not doing a good enough job of educating her daughter. Mrs Robertson has said “I want to teach my child at home because I believe she has made better progress than she did at Newman School where she was taught before.”

The response of the local authority has been aggressive and intolerant.  The Council’s social services department supported by the school is arguing that Elysha could be suffering from isolation and missing the company of other children, and has opted to use legislation relating to child abuse and neglect to call a case conference and demand that the Robertson’s attend.

A spokeswoman for Rotherham Council has stated ” .. the authority would always recommend that children receive a better all round learning experience from attending school.”  I couldn’t help thinking of the young Asian boy taught by my friend when I read this!