The information sharing dilemma

“Organisational boundaries and concerns about sharing information must never be allowed to put in jeopardy the safety of a child or young person.”
Lord Laming, ‘The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report’

When it comes to sharing data, there are two main options facing local authorities:

• A hub approach where the various systems in the local authority holding data on children are linked together using a variety of data matching methods to allow all the systems to talk with each other.
• A single child record where all education and children's social care services in contact with a child use the same data system to record and access the information held on each child.

A hub approach links existing databases together providing the user with a personalised front
end to access the data from the separate systems. Whilst this allows authorities to retain their investment in their current systems, joining systems in this way means that an element of data matching is required.

A child’s details in an education database, for example, need to be matched with the same child’s record in the social services system. Small differences in address details entered on each system cause difficulties in the information being matched. Consider also that the costs of maintaining multiple systems and the ongoing data management requirement can be far greater than a single system approach.

In authorities where each service uses a different system, when a child comes to the attention of a new service, a new record is created on them from scratch. The data from different services then needs to be matched together; a partly manual process which can be incredibly time consuming.

More concerning is that social care teams can have very little knowledge of what was going on in education unless they go looking for it. For example, with a looked after child or one that is known to social care, practitioners need to know immediately if they have been excluded or are truanting. A vulnerable child out of school needs support. With systems linked together, no matter how well, there is always a delay in the information.

“Running multiple systems is a solution to information sharing across all the different services but you can never get around the fact that each service has a different set of data on each child. I want to know that every service is working with the same data.”
Bill Malloy, Head of Strategic Intelligence Team, Children’s Services, Liverpool City Council

The alternative is to have a single child record. More than an integrated children’s system (ICS), this is where all the social care data is held in the same database as all of the other information captured by different agencies across and beyond children’s services. The principal benefit to social care staff is direct access to the wealth of information being gathered and maintained by colleagues in other departments and agencies, including those working in early year’s settings, schools and universal services.

Direct access to a wider pool of data saves valuable time that would have been spent contacting these agencies to track down relevant information. It ensures that front-line staff have the information they need to make informed decisions quickly that will make a difference to the lives of the children in their care.

“Schools and early year’s settings play a key role in early identification, intervention and support for children at risk of significant harm or who have additional needs. In the findings of the DCSF biennial overview report of Serious Case Reviews from 2003–05 it was found that 68 per cent of the children aged 4 and over who subsequently died or experienced significant harm had been showing signs of poor school attendance.”
Lord Laming, ‘The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report