The Observer | UK News | Child database 'will breach human rights'

The Observer | UK News | Child database 'will breach human rights' It is not only Blair and the new Home Secretary who are a threat to our Human Rights. The dreadful Margaret Hodge is on the attack too.
The Government wants to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on creating a database with every child’s details on it. I suspected that the Government was likely to try something like this, following our ordeal with the primary school. Not content to take away our political freedoms making every one of us a possible terrorist threat, they want to be free to intrude into our private lives at home. If every child matters, why tax parents of poor children more of their wealth than parents of rich children?
“Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, has said that the plans, outlined in Every Child Matters, the government's green paper on improving child welfare, are in danger of being ruled illegal under European law and may not work in practice.
The government wants the database - which Children's Minister Margaret Hodge has said will cost several hundred million pounds to implement - to list the name, age, address, and educational and health backgrounds of every child in England and Wales. But in a highly detailed, 11-page submission to the education and skills select committee, Thomas has expressed technical and legal concerns which threaten the database's creation.
His chief fear is that the database breaches Article 8 of the convention, which states that somebody's personal information should be subject to strict rules governing their privacy and confidentiality.
In addition, Thomas said the government's decision to put the names of every child in England and Wales on the database was 'difficult to justify as a proportionate response'. As such, the size and scope of the government's plans for the database makes it likely they will breach the convention. “
It is Article 8 which has been violated in referring us to Social care without permission. Now everyone is going to be put in the same boat.
What is wrong with this idea, recommended by the judge in the Climbie case? Would it not solve all the child protection problems, if a database automatically shared all information between agencies relating to every child. It seems so sensible.
Those of us with longer memories will know that there have been many reports based on a string of Climbie’s. Each time proposals were made for better systems to ensure it never happened again. Each time it happens again, but worse. You cannot improve human relations with databases or any other systems.
Let us move back from the general to the particular. A teacher has concerns about the behaviour of our child. This is a serious matter. She thinks the child’s behaviour indicates lack of care, neglect or even abuse. “It was my duty to report it, and I would do it again,” says the teacher. The concerns are relayed to the parents, but they do not see that they are being challenged, because they are not challenged. Even when the behaviour support teacher is brought into the picture, there is no suggestion that the parents are at fault. It is never mentioned that we might be causing emotional problems for J. The head, the designated child protection officer is informed. She collects information and then pounces. She informs the parents that she has made the referral to Social Care. Her responsibility is fulfilled. After Climbie, you cannot be too careful.
The parents are angry. But everything is all right because the child is now protected. Except that there is no medical or social evidence that this child and this family require the state to interfere in their lives in this intrusive way. Even if they know it would be politically incorrect to say it publicly, the medical and social care staff know what abuse and neglect look like and this is not it. Their time has been wasted, and they are itching to say so. But they can’t. Under the new regulations it must be acceptable. But scarce precious resources are being wasted. Worse than that, the parents are falsely accused. They begin to show severe signs of distress. The doctor is more worried for the parents than for the child. But the child is protected. Well, no! The children are now under more stress, because the stress on their parents inevitably disturbs the peace of the household.
We come back to the data base issue. The costs of setting it up are vast, without even considering the problems of keeping it up to date and relevant. Putting money there would take it away from front line services; teachers, medical staff, social care staff. Both main political parties have promised to cut this kind of back room work to protect the face to face workers. Promises, promises!
Victoria Climbie did not die because agencies did not share information. There were failings in this respect, but they did not cause her death. Each of the agencies involved, police, medics, social care, all had seen enough to know she was not safe with her carers. There were several opportunities to intervene that were ignored. The Local Authority was culpable and has continued to fail its children as a more recent case shows. The scape-goated social worker should have acted on the information she had. She failed to do so. The new data base would not remedy this failure. Her supervisors were culpable, but all bar one continued in their posts. The case worker was under qualified to do such demanding case work, but had almost twice as many such cases as a well qualified worker should have done. If you spend the money on a data base you will have even less staff to do the real work.
We are a typical middle England middle class family. We provide better food than the school provides, better accommodation, better supervision, a higher ratio of adults to children. But expensive social work time is wasted on us. Why? Because of Victoria Climbie. No. She suffered horrendous violence, abuse and neglect and was left to die because child protection staff did not do their jobs. They were overworked and incompetent. They should have had better resourcing. The systems were there. The child would be alive today if those systems had been resourced and operated properly. It was the people who failed. In our case, the head lacks human relationship skills and her judgement is poor. She is the laughing stock of the town for her decision to close the school over non existent snow.
Instead of positive, helpful, parents she has a fight on to save her job, which she may well lose. I believe it is possible to train staff to deal with these sensitive issues for a lot less money than it will cost to set up and run this data base.
But New Labour prefers investing in technology to people. It is unwilling to learn from the failings of its other computer systems, as in the CSA.
Margaret Hodge, New Labour’s first Children’s Minister failed dismally to protect the children in her care in Islington, when she was in charge of early new labour there. We cannot expect any better from her here. She chose systems over people then. We should expect her to do the same again. (Please se separate Blog on Hodge).