Background

The Children Act 2004 pathed the way for the details of every child in England and Wales—with the exception of the children of celebrities—to be placed on a Universal Child Database.

ContactPoint is intended to act as central identity register for every child (under-18) in England and Wales from birth.

Each child will be given an ID number and the information held in the database will include name, address, date of birth, contact details for parents, along with all the agencies (school, doctor, health visitor, and social services etc) working with the child.

The stated objective is to enable doctors, social workers, and schools to share information to stop children falling into gaps between different services. As a result, over 300,000 people will have access to the system

As of January 2008, it is anticipated that ContactPoint will deployed to early adopter local authorities and national partners in September or October 2008, and to all other local authorities and national partners in between January to May 2009.

The ContactPoint database will also contain a link to the new social services Common Assessment Framework (eCAF) database—which will contain detailed personal assessments for children and young people accessing services beyond basic health care and education (roughly 50% of the under-18 population).

The stated objective for eCAF is provide a tool for cross-agency information-sharing on children perceived to be making insufficient progress towards the government’s 5 Every Child Matters outcomes:

• Be healthy

• Stay safe

• Enjoy and achieve

• Make a positive contribution

• Achieve economic well-being

The debate map is being seeded with arguments drawn from various sources, including the Foundation for Informational Policy Research's (fipr) 2006 report: Children's Databases – Safety and Privacy, for the Information Commissioner.