The "Childrens Index"

This is an article I recently wrote for New Statesman about the Information Sharing Index, or "Children's Index" as it often known. Sadly, the Statesman would have prefered a different approach so I'm publishing it here while trying to find it another home. There may be opportunities for that soon. It's quite long and fairly detailed, but those details are where the devils are hiding...

How do you save a child from harm? The question, always urgent, became asked with focussed fury after the death in north London of eight year-old Victoria Climbie, sent away by her parents from the Ivory Coast in the lethally misplaced hope that a life elsewhere would be better for her. Beaten, wounded and forced to sleep in a bath lined with her own excrement Victoria’s torment at the hands of a great aunt and her lover came to its fatal end in February 2000. The subsequent inquiry, chaired by Lord Laming, heard that there were twelve occasions where various child protection authorities could have saved her but failed. After the inquiry’s report Tony Blair promised "the most far-reaching reform of children's services for 30 years". Not everyone is pleased about how far that reach could be.

The government is presently piloting a new database: the Information Sharing Index. It is part of the Every Child Matters programme, Labour’s means of delivering the reform the PM pledged. As its name suggests, Every Child Matters is not directed only towards children who suffer abuse and neglect. Introducing it in 2003 Mr Blair called it a response to the findings of the Climbie Inquiry but also alluded to a wider political aim, “to ensure every child has the chance to fulfill their potential.” And Every Child Matters is indeed about every child - every one of the eleven million in England – and the delivery of whatever form of support they’re thought to need. “This means,” reads the Every Child Matters website, “that the organizations involved with providing services to children - from hospitals and schools, to police and voluntary groups - will be teaming up in new ways, sharing information and working together, to protect children and young people from harm and help them achieve what they want in life.”

“Teaming up.” “Working together.” Sounds ideal. As for the “sharing information,” that, of course, is where the Index comes in. Often called the “children’s index”, it is described as a “key element” in the overall strategy, “a tool that will enable practitioners delivering services to children to identify and contact one another easily and quickly, so they can share relevant information about children who need services.” Aside from important concerns about hackers and others with sinister motives – a particular anxiety where children’s lives are involved – what fault is there to find with an IT system for joining up different child welfare agencies? After all, as Nushra Mapstone from the British Association of Social Workers confirms, “sharing information is part of good practice. It’s essential.”

Yet the Index has attracted a varied cast of critics, ranging from the campaign group Action on Rights for Children (ARCH) to the Daily Mail, from campaigners against what Information Commissioner Richard Thomas recently called “the surveillance society” to David Cameron, who attacked it in one of his speeches to the Conservative Party conference in October. And some of this disquiet goes deeper than reflex carping about the “nanny state” interfering in family life to the heart of larger questions about “New” Labour’s approach to social problems and the growth of the so-called “database state.”

In June a conference was held at the London School Of Economics. Its name, Children: Over-Surveilled and Under-Protected, encapsulated the most compelling objection to the strategy the Index is “key” to: that it will do more harm than good. Chairing the conference, child protection expert Dr Eileen Munro took issue with the government’s enthusiasm for the collection and sharing of data about children - of which the Index will be but the next manifestation - describing it as, “probably the least useful approach” to the prevention of harm.

Why? Dr Munro thinks Every Child Matters over-informed by the prime minister’s belief that, in his words to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in September, it is now possible, “to detect and predict the children and families likely to go wrong.” In theory, the Index, which would come under the auspices of the Department for Education and Skills, would assist with this detecting and predicting. By the end of 2008, it is intended to contain “basic information” about all children in England: their name, address, sex and date of birth: names and contact details for their parents or carers, their school, their doctor, health visitor and, perhaps surprisingly, the midwife at their birth along with “practitioners providing other services” and, if appointed, “a lead professional” for that child. Crucially, the Index will also enable those granted access to it to “indicate that they wish to be contacted in relation to a child because they have information to share, are currently taking action, or have undertaken an assessment.”

It is this sharing mechanism that, in theory, will help prevent children in dire need from falling between cracks in the child protection system and also pick up less serious but nonetheless important problems: everything from evidence of anti-social behaviour, susceptibility to teenage pregnancy to academic underperformance. In effect The Index would serve as a screening mechanism, a risk assessment instrument for spotting trouble at an early stage. But would it really result in more “at risk” children – more Victoria Climbies - being identified? Can effective action be taken to stop any form of bad outcome occurring when danger signs are picked up by this means? And would any benefits outweigh other costs?

Dr Munro has grave doubts. Citing research by fellow academics, she claims that screening populations of children in this ways leads to an unacceptably high level of “false positives,” meaning a lot of safe families being mistakenly identified as dangerous. Still worse, she finds a lot of “false negatives,” turn up too: dangerous families wrongly judged safe. Screening for future criminality, another goal of Every Child Matters, also seems unreliable: it simply cannot be assumed that today’s wild five year-old will be tomorrow’s armed robber or drug-abuser. And there’s uncertainty about the effectiveness of early intervention. “Success, while significant, is modest,” according to Dr Munro, who wonders whether it is the best use of resources.

And then there is the big question of privacy. With the Information Sharing Index this is especially sensitive because the children in most need of help and protection are often from the types of families that are most wary of authority. The more anxiety there is about the consequences of professionals “knowing their business”, the less likely members of such families are to seek help or to co-operate when it is offered. The government stresses that the Index will not hold case information or “subjective observations” about a child and that those allowed access to it will be scrupulously vetted. Nonetheless, critics are alarmed at what they see as the erosion of the principle of consent.

Neither children not their parents or careers will have a choice about appearing the Index - it will be a statutory requirement for local government bodies, schools, health authorities, police forces, local probation boards, youth offending teams and others to provide the data it will hold. It was only after strong reservations were expressed about that Minister for Children And Families, Beverley Hughes, whose responsibility the Index is, announced that an exception would be made for those relating to “sensitive services” a child may have received to do with sexual and mental health or substance abuse unless it judged that the child is in serious danger of abuse. A DfES spokesman stressed that professionals will, in practice, be expected to consult with families before going to the Index. Yet some of those currently party to a consultation taking place about the Regulations that will govern the Index’s use remain unsure about how it’s all going to work.

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, sees the value of “tracking” pupils within schools but fears information may be misused if it’s accessible to others. Natalie Cronin of the NSPCC says that unless young people’s views about how information about them is gathered and used are respected, “we risk losing their trust and this could result in those in need not turning to professionals for help.” The point is underlined by a survey published in September by the Children’s Commissioner for England showing that many young people fear the Index will be intrusive. It is not yet clear to the Department how access to the Index will be conferred and controlled. At present it seems likely that an official in each local authority will act as gatekeeper to all other potentially interested parties, but the details have yet to be finalised. Meanwhile, IT security experts such as Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University are not convinced that the Index will be safe. He is a co-author of a report to that effect compiled for the Information Commissioner.

For some, these matters of consent and privacy have major philosophical implications too. “This level of monitoring,” argues Terri Dowty of ARCH, “begs the question of whose responsibility it is to bring children up. Will parents’ role become one of merely ensuring their child use the services that practitioners have deemed necessary?” ARCH disputes Tony Blair’s claim that Every Child Matters was a response to the Climbie inquiry at all, tracing its roots to a 1999 white paper called “Modernising Government” which looked at ways of running all government services in the information age. The upshot, Dowty believes, has been a change of balance in the relationship between children and families on the one hand and, on the other, those whose job it is to help them which is emblematic of a broader one between citizen and state.

The ARCH website contains a “database masterclass,” documenting the many ways in which material about children has started to become collected since Labour came to power. There is already an e-bank of information gathered via the Common Assessment Framework, an online form, which may be filled in on a child’s behalf by a teacher, social worker or other child welfare profession if they think that child needs extra support of some kind and which solicits comments about the child’s family circumstances, motivations and emotional wellbeing. These are the “assessments” the Information Sharing Index will “indicate” to those who look a child up on it.

Then there are police databases, including one of the Met’s, called Merlin, on which are filed details of any child who “comes to notice,” regardless of whether they have committed an offence. Another national one is Connexions, a careers and counseling service for teenagers, which can involve personal advisors uploading assessments of a child’s self-image, family history and emotional wellbeing. Forthcoming is the Integrated Children’s System, a management system for children’s social services, which will contain case records of all children known to social services. Terri Dowty believes that the Information Sharing Index will become the “central hub” for all these other databases and that their proliferation illustrates a flawed ethos behind the whole Every Child Matters approach.
Launching it, Tony Blair hailed what he called a “shift away from associating parent support with crisis interventions to a more consistent offer of parenting support throughout a child and young person’s life.” The stated aim was to break the “cycle of disadvantage” afflicting too many children, and who would argue that such goals aren’t desirable? Yet Nushra Mapstone points out that there is presently a shortage of around 5,000 children and family social workers, with some ten percent of such local authority posts unfilled. “There is,” she says, “no substitute for people on the ground. And if you try to compensate with systems that frighten people off it only drives problems underground.”

It will cost £224 million over next three years to set the Index up, and an estimated £41 million a year to run it thereafter, the latter mostly coming from local authorities. Will it turn to out to be a model of e-government that helps millions of children to lead healthier, happier and safer lives? Or will it end up typifying some of the least attractive traits of the Tony Blair era: meaningless managerialism, the erosion of liberties and, of course, the triumph of spin over substance?

THE END

Comments

[Noosa Lee]

Has the New Statesman got a problem with critical appraisal then? Information is only as good as the idiots analysing it and this tends to be the biggest problem.

[Phil Booth]

Sorry to hear the New Statesman didn't take this, Dave. It seems that all the government has to do is prescribe a new database at the heart of a new, generally flawed, piece of 'policy' and everyone's eyes roll back into the back of their heads...

Whilst it may be complex and a little bit technical, the very premise of an ever-expanding 'database state' is what should chill people's blood.

But, as you say, the devil is in the detail. And if publications like the Statesman won't look at this, who will?

[Littlebear]

I work with databases and statistics all the time. Databases are only as good as the analysts who build and use them. This could rip the social fabric of a country apart if done wrong. If done right, it could still cause more harm than good.