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A matter that seems almost to be sneaking up on the public unawares is the extent to which under-18s are already being held on easy-access state databases and are being indexed for UK government files. Whilst this is not strictly an ID cards matter, Lewes says No2ID is strongly concerned about the implications for children.

The Children’s Index

The press is now beginning to focus attention on the Children’s Index. Scheduled to launch in 2008 and already on trial in 12 regions of the UK, the Children’s Index will be a database of all 14 million British children, listing their contact details and all ways in which they come into contact with other government agencies such as the social services and police and, in time, the NHS. It is expected that contents of the Children’s Index will be open to some 400,000 government agency employees such as social workers, police, education workers, their secretariats and others. If a child comes into contact with the police or social services for any reason that is recorded, that fact will appear on the Children's Index.

Ask yourself: do you want this information being made so widely and easily available?

Then go on to ask yourself: do you want this information being made so easily available to 'officials' but not to the child's parents? The law requires that for children over 12, parents cannot see the data without their child's consent!

The Integrated Children's System

The Children’s Index is being built as a directory of children. The information it contains is not highly detailed, but - being a directory - it leads users to databases that hold very detailed information. If a child has recorded contact with the social services, that information will appear not only on the Children’s Index but - more significantly - on databases created as part of the Integrated Children's System (ICS) which "will hold all of the case records and information about every contact a child or young person has with social services". It's suggested that in time this will also link up to a child's NHS records, and that a similar thing will be created for the elderly. The ICS has already been piloted: it will be ready towards the end of this year (2006) and all local authorities are required to have fully operational systems in place by January 1997. West Sussex is one of the pilot areas.

The Children’s Index and the ICS will be automatically linked without the need for human intervention. A summary of how the system works (Database Masterclass) tells us "it is intended that when a child becomes involved with social care, an electronic message will be sent to the Children’s Index to inform everyone of social services involvement and to seek information about any other agencies’ involvement."

ICS information is to be available to a wide range of government agency workers (how wide is not yet clear). So once the Children’s Index is a working reality, full social services case histories will potentially be only a few clicks away from the Children’s Index for vast numbers of people. For them it'll be a case of find a child in the Children’s Index > see that child has a social services entry > click through to read the case details. So each time a government spokesperson denies that the Children’s Index will hold any detailed case information on children, they're not lying but look through the smokescreen and ask about the ICS.

National Pupil Database

There is already a National Pupil Database (NPD) that holds quite detailed data on every school child. Again, the Children’s Index can be regarded as a directory: look up a child in the Index and then go to the National Pupil Database for their school records. At present, the NPD is (officially) only used for statistical purposes at national level, while at local level, ‘officials’ can look up individual pupil records. But make no mistake that it’s quite possible for the individual pupil records to be made available to any other agency, anywhere. And the Government has confirmed that this information will never be deleted.

Police records

Then, of course, there are police records. Once more, a government agency worker looks up a child in the Index: if it shows police contacts, it means that the police have some record on that child. So then, ultimately, non-police agencies will be able to look at those records. This seems a bit further away in time as the police is not quite as advanced in its database building but it is intended.

What's wrong with such data being held?

The government argument is that such data - and its indexing via the Children’s Index - will help with the state care of children by enabling government agencies to communicate more effectively. This may be true to some extent but at what cost?

• Ignoring the ICS and the NPD for a moment, the Children’s Index itself is more than just a set of contact details for each child. Camden Council says that the information will include such facts as that practitioners have “information to share”, are “taking action” or are “undertaking an assessment”. So
  • what does it do to a child’s quick-glance reputation if their head teacher can see that, for example, the police and social services hold records on a child?
  • what if three different branches of social services are all named as having "information to share"? What would any viewer make of that?
  • what is anyone to conclude if they see that the police are "taking action"?
  • some forms of police contact or social services contact are entirely innocent. There are plenty of reasons why there may be "information to share" on a child without there being any implication that the child is guilty of something or is a victim of some sort. But if their Index entry falls into the wrong hands (a malicious person? the gutter press?), it would be very easy for someone of ill-will to jump to the wrong conclusions!
  • it will be easy for any malicious viewer of the Children’s Index to work out which children are likely to be vulnerable, an easy prey, even without reference to the other child databases
• The sort of information the ICS will hold on children will be about as intrusive, intimate and confidential as any record could possibly be. It's also likely that it will include guesswork and inaccuracies - case notes are often opinions and conjecture rather than proven fact. Is it possible that information held on a nationally accessible database of this sort, containing millions of records and open to many, many users, can ever be held as securely as this sort of information should be held?
• Children must be allowed to make mistakes. It's part of growing up. Teenagers sometimes need the shock of seeing their own vulnerabilities in order to start behaving responsibly. Should data on childhood mistakes be available to anyone in "authority" who cares to look, and then travel with these children for evermore, throughout their childhood and adult life?

Lewes says No2ID believes it impossible to keep this data as confidential as it should be kept. If some 400,000 people (many of whom work with children) are to have access to it, it's bound to fall into the wrong hands. 400,000 must statistically include a fair number of criminal and disturbed people. The Children's Index is like a little black book specially drafted for those who mean children harm. And it's inevitable that the "street price" for stolen copies of the database will be peanuts, so widely available is it.

Adults worry enough about identity theft but in truth their main worry is often about money - credit card numbers and so forth. How much more damaging could be identity theft against a vulnerable child? Particularly as once the theft has occurred, it can never be undone.

And if the government believes these databases will be secure, why is it that the children of the rich and famous are not to be included? See recent editions of the Daily Telegraph and other papers.

What do we do?

Raising public awareness is probably the first task. Most parents (and many teenagers) will be aghast to hear what's heppening. There's been little commentary, press or opposition so far, as the whole scheme seems to have been brought in by the back door, after a few 'enabling' phrases (of a very general nature) in the Children's Act 2004 and then lots of activity behind the scenes. Perhaps it is now time to raise a public outcry.

The Children’s Index and the ICS are to be administered in this area by East Sussex County Council. East Sussex has produced a bland page on its website and an equally bland 2-page leaflet on the Children’s Index but nothing we've been able to find on the other children's databases. And no real detail on how everything is to be operated. Asking East Sussex County Council for more information and lobbying County Councillors seems a sensible next move. Remember that under the Freedom of Information Act, you can demand to know things like how many children are listed by East Sussex in the ICS, how many people (and in what positions) have access to that data and what plans it has to link ICS data to the Children's Index.

Further information

Channel 4
A Channel 4 news report from 31st August on the Children’s Index. Summarises the Channel 4 ’30 minutes’ documentary (broadcast on 1st September) that for the first time awoke many people’s awareness of the Children’s Index.

ARCH
ARCH is already campaigning against the Children’s Index (and generally against many other such issues), though there's little information on its website. But it has published a very useful paper which shows how the Children's Index relates to other databases, and which attempts to tackle the complexity of police databases and ‘at risk’ databases.

Leave Them Kids Alone
This website is against child fingerprinting at schools. This is not directly related to the Children’s Index as the fingerprinting is an initiative from schools or LEAs, not from central Government. But many parents (and children) see this as an abuse of children's rights and too authoritarian, particularly as it's generally done without consulting or even informing parents. Parents are advised to ask their children if they've been fingerprinted at school: they may be surprised by the results. So far we have no information on whether Lewes schools are fingerprinting.

Government sites
The government has published an official description of the ICS which is useful to know about but is rather a lot to wade through. There's a better government-based description on its All Wales Unit website.

BBC website
An article by No2ID's national coordinator Phil Booth on the BBC website.

The Register
An NSPCC poll shows one of the major flaws of the Children’s Index.

ICS pilot areas
The official list of ICS pilot areas. Note that East Sussex is mentioned as a pilot area but the email address given is for West Sussex and it appears that it is indeed West Sussex, not East Sussex, that’s been piloting.

lewes@no2id.net