General
Section 10: Co-operation to improve well-being
60.The purpose of this section is to create a statutory framework for local co-operation between local authorities, key partner agencies (‘relevant partners’) and other relevant bodies (‘other bodies or persons’), including the voluntary and community sector, in order to improve the well-being of children in the area. The duty to make these arrangements is placed on the local authority and a duty to co-operate with the local authority is placed on the relevant partners. As well as underpinning wide co-operation arrangements, these duties and powers will also provide the statutory context within which agencies will be encouraged to integrate commissioning and delivery of children’s services, underpinned by pooled budgeting arrangements, in Children’s Trusts.
61.Subsection (1) imposes a duty on the local authority to make arrangements to promote co-operation between the authority, its relevant partners (listed in subsection (4)) and other bodies exercising functions or engaged in activities relating to children in the authority's area. The duty on each partner agency to co-operate is in subsection (5). Subsection (4)(f) refers to the Connexions Service.
62.Subsection (2) sets out the purposes of such arrangements. They are to be made with a view to improving the well-being of children in the authority’s area. This subsection also specifies the aspects of well-being with which such arrangements are concerned. These reflect the five outcomes which children identified as being most important to them.
63.Subsection (3) ensures that in making arrangements, children’s services authorities must have regard to the importance of the role of parents and carers in improving the well-being of children.
64.Subsections (6) and (7) give a power for all the specified partners to provide staff, goods, services, accommodation or other resources and to pool budgets in support of these arrangements.
65.Subsection (8) requires those subject to the duties to have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State. This guidance will be issued jointly by the relevant government departments to all of the relevant partners. It is likely that the guidance will set out the outcomes expected of these arrangements. These include: effective working together to understand the needs of local children, agreeing the contribution each agency should make to meet those needs, effective sharing of information at a strategic level and about individual children to support multi-agency working, and oversight of arrangements for agencies to work together in integrated planning, commissioning and delivery of services as appropriate. The guidance will, in particular, make clear that, for the local authority and Primary Care Trust and other participating services (e.g. Connexions, Youth Offending Teams) these arrangements should include consideration of integrated commissioning in the delivery of children’s services. There will also be guidance as to the kinds of other bodies and persons referred to in subsection (1)(c) which the local authority may involve in these arrangements.
66.Subsection (9) permits arrangements made under this section to include those relating to persons aged 18 and 19 and persons over 19 receiving services as care leavers under the Children Act 1989 and persons under 25 with learning difficulties receiving services under the Learning and Skills Act 2000.
Section 11: Arrangements to safeguard and promote welfare
67.This section imposes a duty on specified agencies to make arrangements to ensure that their functions are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The aim of this duty is to:
complement the general co-operation duty (section 10) in the specific area of children’s safeguards;
ensure that agencies give appropriate priority to their responsibilities towards the children in their care or with whom they come into contact;
encourage agencies to share early concerns about safety and welfare of children and to ensure preventative action before a crisis develops.
68.This duty is intended to ensure that agencies are conscious of the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare in the course of executing their normal functions. Exercise of this duty will require agencies that come into contact with children to recognise that their needs are not always the same as adults i.e. that they are children, and vulnerable, as well as being patients, offenders, or people who use local amenities.
Subsection (1) sets out the persons and bodies to which the duty applies.
Subsection (2) sets out the duty and makes clear that it continues to apply where the relevant body contracts out services.
Subsection (3) excludes the application of the duty where section 175 of the Education Act 2002 applies. That section places a similar duty on Local Education Authorities, schools and further education colleges, i.e. to make arrangements for ensuring that their functions are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and to have regard to guidance issued for this purpose by the Secretary of State.
Subsection (4) requires those exercising the duty to have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State.
Section 12: Information databases
69.This section creates a power for the Secretary of State by regulations made by affirmative resolution procedure (section 66(3) refers) to require local authorities to establish and operate a database or databases of information about all children and other young people to whom arrangements under section 10 or 11 or section 175 of the Education Act 2002 may relate (subsection (1)(a)). Alternatively, the Secretary of State may set up such databases himself and he may set up a body corporate to operate such databases (subsections (1)(b) and (2)). Such databases might be set up at a local, regional or national level.
70.The purpose of the information databases that would be set up under this section is to facilitate contact between professionals who are supporting individual children or who have concerns about their development, well-being or welfare with the aim of securing early, coherent, intervention. The purpose of including the basic data set out in subsection (4) is to help practitioners identify quickly a child they have contact with, and whether that child is getting the universal services (education, primary health care) to which he or she is entitled. Such data, suitably anonymised, would also serve a purpose in service planning. These purposes relate directly to the overarching duties on service providers to co-operate to promote the well-being of children (section 10) and to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (section 11). The purposes for which information databases may be used also include the duty of Local Education Authorities and governing bodies to fulfil their functions in a way that safeguards and promotes the welfare of children under section 175 of the Education Act 2002.
71.The section sets out the principles that would govern information sharing using information databases, including the basic information that is to be included in respect of all children. The detailed operational requirements will be set out in the affirmative procedure regulations referred to above and, as to more technical matters, in directions and guidance issued by the Secretary of State under subsections (12) and (13).
72.Subsection (3) provides that a database may only include information specified in subsection (4) in relation to a person to whom subsection (1) relates (i.e. all children and other young people within the scope of sections 10 and 11 and section 175 of the Education Act 2002).
73.Subsection (4) describes the information to be held on the database. The basic data to be held for all children comprises: name; address; gender; date of birth; a unique identifying number; name and contact details of any person with parental responsibility or who has day to day care of the child; details of any education being received whether in an educational institution or other setting; name and contact details of a GP practice. The subsection also provides for the inclusion of the name and contact details of any practitioner providing a specialist service (of a kind to be specified in the regulations) to a child and the fact that a practitioner has a concern about a child. No material relating to case notes or case history about an individual may be included on the database, but the flexibility exists to require the inclusion of further basic data, for example to provide for future organisational change.
74.Subsection (5) gives the Secretary of State power to make provision for the establishment and operation of information sharing databases.
75.Subsection (6) lists a number of matters concerning the management and operation of information databases that may, in particular, be included in the regulations made under subsection (5). These include requiring or permitting specified types of people or bodies to disclose information to the database, the conditions under which agencies and individuals will be granted access, the length of time that information should be held on the database and procedures for ensuring the accuracy of the data.
76.Subsection (7) lists the people and bodies who can be required to disclose information for inclusion in the database. This enables the primary sources of the basic data to be Primary Care Trusts, Local Education Authorities and the Connexions Service, with other statutory bodies and registered independent schools having a duty to supply such other information as may be required.
77.Subsection (8) lists the people and bodies who can be permitted to disclose information for inclusion in the database. This provides for voluntary sector bodies and the Inland Revenue (for Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit records), among others, to respond to any requests by the people who may be required to establish the databases to fill in any gaps in the basic data.
78.Subsection (9) permits information held by government departments, such as benefit records from the Department for Work and Pensions, to be supplied on request to fill in gaps in the basic data.
79.Subsection (10) allows the regulations to provide for the delegation of decisions relating to the matters referred to in subsection (6)(e), relating to access to the databases, to persons who may be required to establish the databases.
80.Subsection (11) allows the regulations to provide that people or bodies who are permitted under subsections (6)(c) to (e) or (9) to disclose information to the database may do so notwithstanding their common law duty of confidence. Such a power would be relied upon where practitioners believe, in their professional judgement, that it is in the best interest of the child to share information about that child.
81.Subsection (12) provides that any direction issued by the Secretary of State must be complied with by any person or body who establishes or operates a database under this section and that they must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.
82.Subsection (13) lists matters concerning the operation of the information databases that may, in particular, be included in directions or guidance issued by the Secretary of State. These include management functions, technical specifications, conditions relating to database security, the transfer and cross-matching of information from one database to another and the issuing of advice to children and their parents about their rights, under the Data Protection Act 1998, to access information held about them on the database.
