ContactPoint database of 11million children’s details to go ahead despite security fears
Martin Beckford and Graeme Paton write in The Daily Telegraph:
ContactPoint was put on hold again last summer because of “glitches” and the input of data was suspended completely in March when new loopholes were discovered.
Staff at all 150 councils had been looking for vulnerable children – such as the offspring of high-profile parents or those fleeing abuse – whose details needed to be “shielded”.
But the council officers discovered that adopted children were listed on the database both by their original and adopted surnames, leaving them at greater risk of being tracked down, while unprotected duplicate files were also being generated.
Now, however, the work of the 20 councils and charities involved in the “early adopter phase” has been deemed a success and ministers have announced that the project will be taken up nationally. An estimated 390,000 social workers, teachers, police officers and health care workers will be able to access the data once they have been trained and all the records entered into the system.
