SusanGaszczak

Government are currently in the process of setting up a register of all children in the country that will be able to track children, they are calling it Contact Point, I call it an

Identity register. It will contain their name, address, date of birth and gender. It will also store any information of any contact, not details, that they have with any agency.

The data from each of the varying agencies, ranging from schools to the youth service, doctors, hospitals and sexual health clinics to the third (voluntary) sector. It will also link to the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions), NHS (National Health Service), DCSF (Department of Children, Schools and Families) and ONS (Office of National Statistics) databases nationally. It will be fed by varying systems, as each council has a different system to store data.

It will be able to track children as they move from one county or local authority area to another. Authorised people will be able to access this system to see what involvement children have had with a variety of services.

Details will be available to the age of 18, and archived until the adult is 24, then securely destroyed.

No child can escape being on this register and you to know what the register says about you, you have to apply to your local authority under the Data Protection Act.

Linked to the children will be the parents of carers and their details.

Users of this system will be eCRB (extended criminal records bureau) checked. This however will not stop anyone who wishes to hack the system. They tell me it will be secure but looking at the number of agencies and computer systems feeding into this does not leave me with confidence.

It is unclear as to who will get what level of access, will a teacher be able to see if a child has visited a sexual health clinic, will a parent applying under Data Protection be able to see similar.

This whole system leaves you with a feeling of filling in the gap that the National Identity Register misses, children under 16 that legally do not need to be on this.