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Child database will ‘pry into family life’ Daniel Hughes A NEW national children’s database will contain details of relatives with drinking problems and of relationship difficulties between parents. The register is intended to identify and help youngsters felt to have problems holding them back at school. It is not designed for children at risk of harm but for those with any health, learning or general wellbeing problems. The highly personal data will be gathered as part of the common assessment framework, a key part of the government’s commitment to “early years” intervention.
Critics have attacked the move towards a computerised database - which will begin next year - as an unjustified intrusion into family life. Liz Davies, a former social worker and senior lecturer in social care at London Metropolitan University, said: “It’s state intrusion that’s not warranted. “When you are intruding into family life you have got to have a good justification and there is not a level of harm here that justifies that level of intervention. The threshold has been pushed down.” It has also emerged that ministers suppressed a report that warned of serious difficulties facing a related project to centralise the details of children who have contact with care services. Both schemes are components of the Every Child Matters programme that was introduced after the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié in 2000. The common assessment scheme will encourage professionals such as teachers and doctors, who have contact with children, to pass on concerns to assessors who will then talk to families about a child’s homelife.
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