NO2ID

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/200 ... -databases

At risk from the registers?

Liz Lightfoot
The Guardian, Tuesday 24 March 2009

...

Children are among those most at risk from Britain's database state, warns the report, published yesterday by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which looks in detail at 46 public sector databases being set up across government departments. Three of the systems with the most critical problems concerning issues of legality, privacy and consent are those set up to support and protect children, it says.

...

"A childminder contacted us to say she had been on an afternoon's training course and was told she had to fill in CAF forms," says Dowty. "She said she was paid to look after someone's children, she was not there to sit in judgment on their parents, and didn't feel she had the expertise to comment on their family situations and relationship with the child."

...

You can opt out of having a CAF done on your child.

The Practitioner Guidelines say:

Yes, it is meant to be a voluntary process. However, what practitioners all over the country are telling us is that, in reality, families have to agree to the process if they want access to services.

It's also worth remembering that some LAs are quite wrongly saying that 12-yos can be presumed competent to consent to the CAF. We've just finished a lengthy review of the law relating to children's consent, and there is absolutely no basis in English law for this assertion. The full report can be downloaded from our site:http://www.archrights.org.uk/issues/Virtual%20Child.htm