Hello my name is Hilary Garratt.
NHS England is delighted to be leading the implementation of the Child Protection Information
Sharing programme.
This programme is really important for us to be able to protect our most vulnerable
children.
One it’s a very good example of integration between health and social care, it’s a good
example of using a unique identifier, which is the NHS number, and that’s very pioneering
in terms of sharing between health and social care, it’s about sharing information, it’s,
the forum was very concerned about safeguarding, and this is another system by which you’d
have increased assurance and safety for these vulnerable children.
The benefits will be children who are taken to different A&E departments by their parents
for medical care, we will find them.
Because as we know from history, if the parents want to hide from their own local authority
where they’ve taken the children for medical treatment, that’s going to change because
those children are going to be protected, because when they access an A&E department,
wherever they might access, that information will be flagged up to the clinician, that
this child is known to a local authority, and is subject to a child protection plan.
So in terms of protecting that child, wherever that child might present, or wherever the
parent brings the child for medical attention, it’s not going to be missed.
You know, clinicians are going to be told straight away that the local authority is
responsible for that child’s safety.
Tracy is a 19-year-old pregnant woman, resident in a hostel in Birmingham, who is receiving
ongoing methadone treatment.
Because of Tracy’s drug problems her unborn baby has been placed under a chid protection
plan.
Tracy’s friends in London are able to get hold of more methadone, so she decides to
go and spend time with them.
After taking too much methadone, Tracy becomes disoriented, and wanders into a park, where
she starts going into labour.
Luckily a passerby spots Tracy and calls an ambulance.
Tracy does not tell the people providing her care that she is taking methadone.
Without any knowledge of her situation the hospital discharges Tracy and her baby.
Tracy goes straight back to her friends and starts taking more methadone.
Tracy continues to take excessive methadone, and neglects her child, who is now in severe
danger.
The hospital had no idea that she was a risk to her child, and the authorities in Birmingham
have no idea that she’s given birth.
But if the hospital had the Child Protection Information Sharing System, things would have
been very different.
The moment that Tracy was admitted to the maternity ward, her NHS number would have
linked into the Child Protection Information Sharing System.
This would have informed staff that they must contact social services, who could then have
intervened, and helped Tracy and her baby.
After helping Tracy get back to Birmingham, social services can help the newborn child,
and if necessary, apply to the courts to have the baby taken into care, if Tracy is unable
to care for him.
Whatever happens in the long term, social services are engaged with the child and mother,
and are aware of the child’s birth and the mother’s whereabouts.
Without the Child Protection Information Sharing System, the child would have been in serious
danger.
On the surface we do have conversations, and I’m sure they happen internally, and externally,
and we have those conversations together about how we each perceive the other, and we’ll
have discussions about people being precious about their information, about people being
secretive with their information, and it probably would always be that people in children and
social care would be more critical of their colleagues in health.
I’m mindful of a scenario where I’ve gone to hospitals where a child has been subject
to a pre-birth child protection plan, and a decision has been made via the courts that
the child needs to be removed to a place of safety.
That’s a very difficult scenario to be involved in, and as a social worker going to a clinical
setting, going to a hospital where the norm for my colleagues in health is that it’s
a time of joy, it’s a time of celebration because a baby’s come into the world, and
then a social worker comes to burst that bubble of that magical time for that family.
Now if my colleagues in health were more aware of the information which, probably, had led
to that decision-making, then it may make our relationship, using that as an example,
we perhaps could work more effectively with each other, and there wouldn’t be this invisible
barrier of one agency judging the other.
http://systems.hscic.gov.uk/cpis