“The protection of our children is crucial,” says Tom Burnett, Child Health Programme Manager at the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). In his first blog for Social Care News, he explains how his organisation’s work on information sharing is helping children receive the best care and protection they deserve.
NHS trusts and local authorities in England began using the national Child Protection – Information Sharing (CP-IS) system in November, helping protect children identified as ‘vulnerable’ who visit NHS unscheduled care settings.
For a number of years, we at the Health and Social Care Information Centre have worked hard with partners to deliver this NHS England funded project to help save vulnerable children from abuse and neglect by giving local authorities and NHS trusts a powerful tool; shared information.
By sharing information, health and social workers are able to make better decisions around safeguarding of a child through better supporting information.
Local authorities’ child protection social care IT systems are now being connected with those used by staff in NHS unscheduled care settings with the correct level of permission.
One of the first NHS trusts to start using CP-IS was Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Although they already had a child and young people protection system in place, it had limitations and did not identify those children that have child protection concerns and were from out of their area or looked after children.
Their Lead Nurse for Safeguarding Children Vivien Barnes said: “With our own system we did not have those children “flagged” who were looked after children, who are an extremely vulnerable group and often move around the country which is a great benefit of CP-IS.
“The information provided through CP-IS is accurate and is up to date. Our own system required a large input of administrator time and is reliant on the information being shared by the local authority.
“Having the information which includes contact details of the local authority dealing with the child has proven invaluable to staff who previously would have spent a significant amount of time trying to secure this information.”
Lancashire County Council’s Children’s Social Care Senior Manager Andrew Sofield said: “CP-IS facilitates the quick and efficient sharing of information that will assist in protecting the child. A significant benefit of the system for our organisation is that the social worker is one of the first professionals to be notified that the child has had contact with an emergency care setting meaning the child protection plan can begin with immediate effect. Information can be shared with the core group members and any actions required can be put into place.”
Please contact us if you want to find out more about CP-IS: cpis@hscic.gov.uk
Further information
HSCIC’s CP-IS web pages
CP-IS factsheet
Watch this video to learn more about CP-IS