What is Contact Point?

Contact Point is a database holding information about every child in England. Launched in 2009, it is intended for professionals in children’s services to provide a complete online directory of all children from birth, together with a list of the agencies with which they are in contact

What information does Contact point hold?

- Identifying information for each child in England: name, address, date of birth, gender, and contact details for parents or carers. Each child also has a unique identifying number;

- Contact details for the child’s educational setting and GP practice and for other practitioners or services working with the child; and
 
- An indication as to whether a service or practitioner holds an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework, or whether they are a lead professional for that child.

All children will be included in the database, but the records of some children are ‘shielded’ if it is thought necessary. Information that a ‘sensitive’ service – sexual health, substance misuse and mental health – is being provided is included on Contact Point with consent. However, this is a difficult area, particularly in determining what constitutes proper, informed and non-coercive consent for a child.

What are Liberty's concerns?

Liberty’s starting point is that child protection is of the utmost importance and we are not opposed to appropriate information-sharing. However, Contact Point raises a number of child protection and privacy concerns:

Information overload - A database with excessive information retention could give rise to the potential that a child genuinely at risk might be missed because of an overload of information, as every single child in England will be included on the database.

Privacy - We are particularly concerned by how many people will have access to potentially sensitive information held on the database, including non-professionals who are therefore not accountable to any professional body.

Security - We also have concerns over the security of the database: improper access to a database containing the details of all children in England could be hugely damaging.


Liberty lobbied extensively for safeguards to be included when the legislation that created the database went through Parliament and will continue to try to influence the implementation of the scheme.
 

The future of Contact Point

Following the 2010 General Election the new Conservative - Liberal Democrat Coalition Government published a summary of their Agreement, which contained a pledge to scrap the Contact Point database.

Read Liberty's full Response to the Con-Lib Coalition Agreement (PDF)