Town chosen to pilot child database

WARRINGTON has been chosen as one of the pilot authorities for the Government’s controversial new scheme to build a database eventually containing details of every child up to the age of 18 in England.
The ContactPoint database is a £230 million project intended to make it easier for social workers and the police to co-ordinate actions for at risk and vulnerable children.
It is considered a vital part of the Every Child Matters initiative – but it has been slammed by the Conservative opposition because the data will be accessible by more than 330,000 users nationwide.
They claim there will be inadequate security guarantees.
David Mowat, (right) Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Warrington South said: “I am disappointed that Warrington has been selected as a pilot for this flawed scheme. We will cancel it after the election.”
The Tories would propose instead the promotion of data sharing between key local professionals and a small targeted databases so that children moving across local authority boundaries – if they caused concern – could be traced to the relevant professional at their previous address.
Mr Mowat added: “We would free up professionals to concentrate on genuinely vulnerable children- those on the child protection register, children in care, children from households suffering domestic violence.”