Child Protection – Information sharing project
NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) have launched a series of short films to promote the benefits of the Child Protection – Information Sharing project (CP-IS). The CP-IS will help the NHS give a higher level of protection to children who present in unscheduled care settings by enabling local authorities to share child protection information with the NHS for the first time, at a national level.
Using animations and interviews with NHS staff, social workers and the staff of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the films demonstrate the very real difference effective information sharing makes in the lives of children at risk of cruelty.
The films can be seen below and are available to view now on NHS England’s YouTube channel.
Contact cpis@hscic.gov.uk to find out more
Child Protection – Information sharing project – How it works
Child Protection – Information sharing project – George
Child Protection – Information sharing project – Jenny
Child Protection – Information sharing project – Tracey
2 comments
In the video ‘Child Protection – Information sharing project – Jenny’ the following statement was made by Dr David Low, Clinical Informatics advisor, NHS England:
‘Between 10% and 13% of children who have a serious case review, that means they have actually been at serious harm, are actually children who are already looked after in the care of foster carers,’
The ‘Department for Education Characteristics of children in need in England: 2012 to 2013’ show that 0.38% of children were the subject of a child protection plan. I.e. they were found to be at risk in the care of their parents.
The figure that up to 13% of children in foster care are at risk is appalling. To be quite clear this means that children are 38 times more likely to be abused by foster carers than by their own parents.
The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the assessment of whether foster carers are safe to look after children is critically flawed. By default, since children are being removed from a home environment to an environment that is 38 times less safe then the assessment of children at risk in their own homes is also critically flawed.
I would be interested to see a Department of Health response to these statistics. I have taken a screenshot of this post.
Dear T. Llewellyn Jones,
Thank you for writing a comment on the NHS England website.
The statistics mentioned within the video clip have been taken from the Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer 2012, Chapter 11 ‘Looked after children & young people’, which provides the key statistics used.
To clarify, this is not 13% of children in foster care, but 13% of children subject to a Serious case review.
The results of these are reviewed in 3 yearly blocks and analyse around 100 cases
Kind Regards
NHS England