The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) admitted last night that it had uncovered problems in the system for shielding details of an estimated 55,000 vulnerable children.
These include children who are victims of domestic violence, those in difficult adoptions or witness protection programmes and the children of the rich and famous, whose whereabouts may need to be kept secret.
The project has been dogged by controversy since its inception in 2003 and the loss of many big databases has dented public confidence. ContactPoint was supposed to go live nationally this year but a spokeswoman for the DCSF said that the department had ordered a “pause in the ongoing data update” pending an investigation into the shielding problems.
The shielding system for vulnerable children is supposed to withdraw everything but a child’s name, sex and age from the computer record that will be available to 400,000 children’s services workers with access to the database. But local authority staff who have been uploading information on to ContactPoint have discovered that the shielding does not always work.
Some adopted children whose identities should be shielded are listed on the database by both their original and their adopted surnames, with a link between the two. This could allow children who have been removed from abusive homes and put forward for adoption to be tracked down by their birth parents.
The shielding system for vulnerable children is supposed to withdraw everything but a child’s name, sex and age from the computer record that will be available to 400,000 children’s services workers with access to the database. But local authority staff who have been uploading information on to ContactPoint have discovered that the shielding does not always work.
Some adopted children whose identities should be shielded are listed on the database by both their original and their adopted surnames, with a link between the two. This could allow children who have been removed from abusive homes and put forward for adoption to be tracked down by their birth parents.
Inept, totally inept. New Labour need to scrap this and all their other databases. Watch the stock excuses be doled out, promises of reform, a non job from Labour ranks be given the role of fending off fuckups sorry data base "czar" be appointed and even more quantitive easing money poured at the problem.
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1 people have spoken:
These simple errors were discovered not by IT chaps checking their stuff but by " Council Employees " checking the data to identify those children ( of the rich and famous ) who need to be shielded" in case the whole fucking thing is not as secure as they promise us.
What grade of staff make these decisions ? Are they entirely familiar with our culture or can they even speak the language ?
Why can't everyone be " shielded ". Cunts.
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