New Children’s Database Announced
The Government announced shortly before Christmas that it is creating a database for all children in the UK, to be up and running by 2008.
It will cost £224 million to set up, £42 million per year to run, and according to the government will contain the following information:
“The Index will hold the following details for every child or young person:
*basic identifying information: name, address, gender, date of birth and a unique identifying number based on the existing Child Reference Number/National Insurance Number;
* basic identifying information about the child’s parent or carer;
* contact details for services involved with the child: as a minimum school and GP practice, but also other services where appropriate; and
* the facility for practitioners to indicate to others that they have information to share, are taking action, or have undertaken an assessment, in relation to a child. ”
The theory behind this is that it will prevent another tragic death such as that of Victoria Climbie, whose case is being used to promote the database. This would be enabled by the “facility” to indicate to other people that a practitioner has information to share.
However, the government has not indicated how this would have helped in a case such as that of Victoria Climbie, where faxes were sent from the doctors to the social services – but ignored. Cynics might suggest that the £224 million would more effectively be used in paying for more efficient social services and heightened awareness from doctors, since the database will only be useful once at least one practitioner has started the process of intervention. A major criticism in the Climbie case was the lack of early intervention.
It is not clear when data will be erased from the database. It would pave the way for the data simply to be transferred onto the National Identity Register for ID cards.
Concerns have also been raised about the security of the system, as it would provide an index of vulnerable children. The implications of such information being sold, leaked or hacked into could hardly be more serious.
January 4th, 2006 at 16:33
Presumably parents/guardians will have limited/no access to this data, and no right to know when or how or by who the information is being used, let alone be asked for their input/permission!
Presumably this scheme also offers an ideal ‘no get out’ entry onto the ‘National Database/ID’ system before people are old enough to have a mind to question it.
Do we get a say in all this; as to whether we want/need it at all, or what changes to the proposal we might need?
January 7th, 2006 at 12:30
This development is really worrying. I spent a short time working for social services and I have no idea how a database of this sort would be of any use in investigating cases of child abuse or anything else.
Neither the child nor their parent/guardian would have any choice in what information was being stored about that child or have access to view that information.
How long will be until our children are tagged at birth?
January 7th, 2006 at 12:30
This development is really worrying. I spent a short time working for social services and I have no idea how a database of this sort would be of any use in investigating cases of child abuse or anything else.
Neither the child nor their parent/guardian would have any choice in what information was being stored about that child or have access to view that information.
How long until our children are tagged at birth?
January 8th, 2006 at 16:56
As with many other things, this is clearly an attempt to defeat the general public by administrative diktat. Clearly there is no intention to delete any information, and it will be automatically transferred to the national ID register “to save you from the troublesome bother of having to register yourself”. This must be one of the “user friendly” things that the Home Office have recently been pushing.
My crime was to have a messy split with my previous wife, and to be awarded custody (as it was then called) of our daughter, who was two at the time. Father getting custody is not normal, so I was put under the supervision of the probation service. I was scared enough of the probation service’s powers then, and that with paper records! With this electronic, never discard any information or opinion system, just how much more will parents (now all of them) have to keep their noses clean and politically correct?
The real worry to me is that opinion will be recorded as fact. And then data mined. I seem to remember my parents telling, with horror, of kids in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia being required to report their parents for “unpatriotic acts”. Once the database is installed and running, such function creep would be very easy.
In the hands of a Hitler or a Stalin this database would be dynamite. Are we so sure that there is not another politician of that ilk waiting in the wings for this whole national surveillance structure to be assembled?
Equally, I agree with the fear expressed in the original post about the consequence of unauthorised access to the information. It is not a matter of whether there will be unauthorised access to the database, but when. Doubtless at some stage the secret services will employ selected snippets from this database to blackmail victims into “seeing it their way”, and agreeing to be compliant.
This stinks.
February 18th, 2006 at 11:26
(an extract from a longer piece on the website entitled when freedom fails…)
“First up, ID cards. Now the state still has a long way to go before this becomes a reality, and it can only be hoped that as people wake up to the reality of this expensive and unwanted scheme then resistance will grow to the point where it becomes unworkable.
Meanwhile 12,171 people have already pledged to refuse to sign up and put £10 towards a legal fund to fight the Act. Sign up here http://www.no2id.net/
Oppressive and irritating as having to use the ID card will be (and whilst not comulsory, you can guarantee you’ll need one to make a benefit claim, put your kids in school etc) the real beast lurks beneath the surface.
The creation of a national database is being planned with Orwellian stealth.
I’ve seen how it’s going to go down.
The Homeless Link database is used by charities and statutory services for dealing with current and ex-street homeless people. Each ‘client’ is held on this computerised record and any worker who is working with that individual, from any agency ‘in the link’ can access and post information about the client.
Information includes details on mental health/medication, current and former drug use, criminal convictions, housing history, employment and education, sexuality, physical health, pretty much everything about an individual you’d wanna know if you were some sinister control freak despot.
It also includes details of interventions, this means info about the any times that an agency has intervened in a clients life, a typical entry might be
“visited ***** today, he seems very down because his benefits haven’t turned up. is drinking heavily, have concerns about deteriation of his mental health”
or such like, allowing every other professional to read what is going on in that clients life without having to ring/e-mail a worker as they would have had to previously.
Whilst it was resisted by many frontline workers, and checks and balances were put in place (such as police not having access to the database – like we believe them) it is a very useful tool, and is used across the sector (although in the end this was enforced on workers rather than agreed with them).
The informal nature of the record keeping means that unsubstantiated allegations can appear that will dog a clients life for years. the void personally knows of one client who had a suspected and not very serious incident of arson on his record (for which he was never arrested let alone convicted).
This had an enourmous influence in the way he was treated as he began the long journey through the hostel system into a flat, as every professional who worked with him had him down as a potential fire raiser and treated him accordingly without any real evidence whatsoever that it was true.
Whilst clients do have the right to see information held on them (although this is rarely made clear) the agency involved can withold info if it feels that there may be a ’serious risk to the health and safety of the client or any other individual’ if the client is ‘allowed’ to see it. No-one will tell the client this information exists, it will just be removed from the database and his/her file when the request to see it is made.
The Government announced shortly before Christmas that it is creating a database for all children in the UK, to be up and running by 2008.
The database will hold the following details for every child or young person:
*basic identifying information: name, address, gender, date of birth and a unique identifying number based on the existing Child Reference Number/National Insurance Number
* basic identifying information about the child’s parent or carer;
* contact details for services involved with the child: as a minimum school and GP practice, but also other services where appropriate; and
* the facility for practitioners to indicate to others that they have information to share, are taking action, or have undertaken an assessment, in relation to a child.
which all seem very familiar.
Presumably when that child turns 18 then information will be transferred to the National ID database, thereby creating a lifelong record held by the state of an incredible amount of information about an individual. Behaviourial problems at school … you could still be living them down when your 50.
And imagine how much that information could be worth – to marketing companies, cops, drug companies, employers, paedophiles and ex-lovers, you name it, they’ll buy it.”