Devon County Council

ContactPoint is a new tool that is being developed nationally to enable professionals delivering services to children to identify and contact one another easily and quickly, so they can work together for the benefit of children, young people and families.

ContactPoint will cover all children and young people in England up to the age of 18 (and between the age of 18 and 25 with the young person’s permission). Its Regulations and Guidance fall under Section 12 of The Children Act 2004.

ContactPoint will hold the contact details of: the general practice where the child receives primary health care, the school they attend and of other practitioners that may be working with them. It will not hold assessment details, case information or any subjective observations about a child. Access to ContactPoint will be restricted to professionals who have undergone Extended Criminal Records Bureau checks.

Part of the Every Child Matters Change for Children programme, ContactPoint is one of a number of new processes/tools being put in place through Devon's AXS Programme including Information Sharing, Common Assessment Framework and Lead Professional to help support multi-agency working. This programme of work falls under the remit of the DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families).

Current Position

All 150 local authorities in England have been given the task of setting up local project teams to implement ContactPoint within their Authority. Due to publicity regarding data security issues that occurred in 2007, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families decided to commission an independent security review of ContactPoint’s security procedures.

The objective of the review was to provide an independent assessment of the controls in place around the security of information to be held on ContactPoint.

You can view the ContactPoint Security Policy and Review in further detail.

Shielding of records

Records can be shielded on ContactPoint, which means that all data will be hidden from practitioners except the name, gender, date of birth and ContactPoint ID of that child.

How do I apply to be shielded?

Speak to the professional who is working with your family, such as a post-adoption social worker, and ask if they have applied for your child's record to be shielded. Many shielding requests are made by professionals working with families.

To apply on your own behalf, call MyDevon's Children and Families on 0845 155 1015 and ask for a shielding pack. This will provide full details including an application form. When this is returned it will be assessed against the criteria laid out in the Government's guidance to local authorities.

How will my application be assessed?

A panel consisting of safeguarding professionals will meet to review and assess your application. The assessment will be based on the evidence you provide against the national shielding guidance.

The ContactPoint Guidance sets out the limited circumstances where shielding would be applicable. Chiefly, these are when there are strong reasons to believe that by not doing so would be likely to:

• place a child at increased risk of significant harm;
• place an adult at risk of significant harm;
• prejudice the prevention or detection of a serious crime; or
• in the case of adoption, put a child’s placement at risk

By increased risk of significant harm we mean that:

• one or more individual(s) are likely to cause significant harm to the child/young person and/or their parent/carer; and therefore
• the child/young person and/or their parent/carer are being, or will be, protected at a location that is not known to the individual(s) posing the threat.

Are there any circumstances where an application for shielding will not be considered?

An objection in principle to ContactPoint is not considered a sufficient reason. Any request made using this reason will be immediately rejected.

Go Live

A revised go-live date was announced at the end of October 2008. The 150 local authorities are split into four groups for go-live. The first group (known as the early adopters) will go live in the first quarter of 2009. Devon is due to go live in the Autumn of 2009. Precise dates are still to be confirmed.

If you need any further information email: contactpoint@devon.gov.uk