Agenda item

            The Board considered a report of the Strategic Director, Children, Young People and Families, which provided an update on the Child Protection Information sharing Programme (CP-IS). The CP-IS was a Government programme which would become a statutory responsibility in April 2015. The aim of the programme was to integrate crucial information into the Health database and allow information to be reported by Health straight into local authority Social Care records for children and young people. It was noted that the targeted group of young people were those subject to Child Protection Planning and those children who were in the care of the local authority. For those children and young people, information would be shared with the central system which speaks with both the Healthcare systems and the Children’s Social Care systems.

            It was also noted that a further aim of the programme was to ensure that a child could attend any medical facility throughout the country and upon presentation would be identified as a child at risk or in care and, as a consequence, actions and treatment provided would consider the presenting risks. The data in respect of their visit to a medical establishment would then uploaded and sent back to the local authority and appropriate action taken. The data was required to be updated every 24 hours by all three systems, Child Social Care (CSC), Health and the central data system.

            Members were advised that in order for the process to work the CSC and Health organisations must have the capability to talk to the central system that collated and amended the data. As a result, each party was required to have an N3 connection. In addition, CSC would require Carefirst to be able to report on the required data, aggregate the data and send it via the N3 to the central system. The operators of the Carefirst CSC system were currently identifying how Carefirst would aggregate the data and send it to the central record. It was likely that there would be cost implications for this but assurances have been given by CP-IS that they would challenge companies that charged too much and had stated that it should cost no more than £1,000.

            In respect of the data collection, the Local Authority was required to produce procedures detailing how and who would be responsible for ensuring the data was recorded appropriately onto the system. This was particularly important as in the event that an NHS number was wrong, the whole dataset would be returned.  The report outlined details of the staged approach to implementing the programme and the next steps involved before the data transfer at the end of September 2014.

            Halton had agreed to be part of wave two of the roll-out and consequently would be operational by April 2015 with a target date being September 2014.

            RESOLVED: That

1)    the contents of the report be noted;

2)    the Board ensures that the appropriate requirements were in place from a Health perspective as outlined; and

3)    the staged approach to implementing the programme be supported.