ContactPoint

ContactPoint is part of a big plan called ‘Every Child Matters’. The plan involves everyone who works with children, and is all about making sure children and young people can have a good life. It aims to make sure all children get the services and support they need as early as possible. This involves making it easier for people from different services to work together to help a child. ContactPoint will help professionals who work with children and young people to quickly find out who else is supporting the same child. This will help professionals contact each other if they need to, and make sure that child is getting all the support they need. ContactPoint will be like a computer-based phone book. It will only hold basic information such as name and contact details. Everyone in England will be on ContactPoint until their 18th birthday.

Many children and young people need extra help or support. They may need this help from more than one person and at different times in their life. If the people who are helping a child can talk to each other, it can make it easier to find the right support for the child early on, before problems become bigger. At the moment, it can take a long time for a professional (like a doctor or a social worker) to know who else is working with the same child.

ContactPoint will be like a computer-based phone book. It will only hold simple information such as:

Name, address, and date of birth of everyone in England up to their 18th birthday;
Name and address for each child’s:
                                                       - Parents or carers;
                                                       - School and doctor;
                                                       - Other services;
                                                        (e.g. health visitor).

ContactPoint will also show if a worker is a ‘lead professional’ and/or if they have worked with a child (and their family) to do a Common Assessment. Go to http://www.ecm.gov.uk/ to find out more about the Common Assessment Framework and the lead professional. If a sexual health, drug, alcohol or mental health worker is working with a child or young person, their contact details will only go on ContactPoint if that young person (and/or their parent/carer) agrees. Even then, ContactPoint will not show the name or contact details for that service - it will just say that one or more sensitive services are involved.

You can view the ContactPoint Fair Processing Notice (Layer 1) here.

By law ContactPoint cannot hold any detailed information at all. This means it will NOT hold information such as doctors’ notes, school records or assessments. It will NOT hold notes about what a child (or anyone in their family) has been doing or what anyone has said about them.

So what does ContactPoint mean to you? Below are a various links that will provide further information about how ContactPoint may affect you. Each link looks at ContactPoint from the eyes of different roles and explains how it would affect you including case studies. We have also provided a link to general Questions and Answers about ContactPoint.

If you require further information please go to: http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/deliveringservices/contactpoint/