Essential link launched

ENGLAND – The first steps to activate the government’s on-line directory of children’s services – ContactPoint – began in late January.

Two security vetted officials from local authorities all over England began the necessary training to start operating the system.

In addition, training will start in the North West and two national voluntary sector partners – Barnardo’s & KIDS – where ContactPoint will be more intensively piloted. Frontline practitioners will start training and operating the system in these areas in the spring and across the country from the summer.

Children’s secretary Ed Balls and health secretary Alan Johnson also announced the membership of a new Social Work Taskforce, set up to carry out a comprehensive review of frontline social work practice, including training and any barriers social workers face in doing their jobs effectively.

The Taskforce brings together senior professionals with a wide range of social work expertise. Ministers have asked for recommendations by the summer.

ContactPoint is an on-line directory of basic contact information for all children and is designed to ensure there is easier and faster contact between doctors, nurses, social workers and police when they suspect a child is at risk.

It will contain the name, address, date of birth, GP and school of every child in the country and crucially the name and contact details of any professional working with that particular child.

ContactPoint is crucial to help these professionals keep children safe. Under current child safeguarding arrangements, if a professional believes a child is at risk they may have no immediate way of knowing whether other services are already in contact with that child.

The government believes a fully operational system could save at least five million hours of professional’s time, currently wasted trying to track down who else, if anyone, is helping the child.

No case information will be held on ContactPoint and it will be impossible to download the contents of ContactPoint.

An additional precautionary step appropriate for records of children who are at risk of significant harm has been developed. These might include children with particular vulnerable circumstances, such as children from families on witness protection schemes, or where one parent has been the victim of domestic abuse, or in certain cases where the child has been adopted.