ContactPoint may be cannibalised for parts ContactPoint may be dead, but the government could yet find a use for some parts of the old system when its new national signposting service finally surfaces, some time in the next couple of years. That appears to be the general gist of a letter sent by Tim Loughton, Secretary of State for Education to Professor Eileen Munro, …
that whoever they define to be the target for this system, it will always exclude MPs and their children, as it did last time.
The way they go on you'd think that children were dying in the streets. Yes, some children have suffered horrible deaths, some of them at the hands of other children.
And you know why? Because some people are psychopaths. Do you know who is really good at lying to the authorities? Psychopaths. Do you know who would be the first to put themselves on the database? Psychopaths...
Psychopaths are scary because they do things so reprehensible that it is essentially impossible to ever issue them with adequate punishment and it is essentially impossible to ever spot them before they attack.
So with that in mind, can we please just chill out and not worry about it? This state of artificial panic will put more lives at risk than the psychopaths.
I "might" die at the hands of a psychopath tonight. Should I be scared? Should you? No of course not.
If elreg did a proper bit of digging they'd realise that ALL children including MPs were on contactpoint. There was a concept of "shielding" a record, which was often gleefully mis-reported as meaning that shielded children would not be loaded onto contactpoint, not true. A shielded record meant that the record was on contactpoint and was flagged so that only those users with appropriate access permissions could view the record.
In principle I don't really care about re-using gear they have anyway. Except that in a couple years it'll all be hopelessly outdated, naturally. Or perhaps just a very poor fit for what's required then, but since it's there it has to be used regardless. Or some other problem. But that's quite besides the point.
The real problem is that everybody involved, and especially the not-so-tech-savvy-at-all professional child botherers and possibly-even-less-tech-savvy votemongers, er, our esteemed representatives, are thinking in terms of technology. Obviously hoping that with enough of this magic technology sauce-or-soup-or-broth, we'll all grow magically happy.
They should be thinking in terms of real problems and looking for effective solutions for that, possibly with the help of IT, but not necessarily so. IT can bring wonderful benefits, but only when the problem is so thorougly understood and the technology so well integrated that it seems positively mundane for its users.
They're not working on that. They're chasing pipe dreams. And that is just about the most expensive things you can do in IT and elsewhere.
Don't be distracted. This is not about "children known to be at risk" or children for that matter...
Surveillance in the guise of child protection scam explained here:
http://www.scottishreview.net/SheilaStruthers50.shtml
Every Child Matters (ECM) and Getting it right for every child (Girfec) are all but identical which is not surprising as systems are intended to be interoperable nationally and EU wide:
http://www.epractice.eu/en/news/283629
eCare provides is a federated system of databases: health, education, police, social work, the voluntary sector, housing etc etc...which provides "a single view of the citizen".
Please google that phrase.
Corelogic is one of the companies (there are a few, Visionware is another)providing eCare solutions in Scotland (only available as a cache now).
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s … =firefox-a
Here are their customers:
http://www.corelogic.co.uk/Customers
They are selling their latest version as supporting the Munro review:
http://www.corelogic.co.uk/Home
The latest sales pitch being used to promote the e-government surveillance agenda North and South of the border is early intervention:
http://subrosa-blonde.blogspot.com/2010/12/early-intervention-and-universal.html
Read this from Monday:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347925/Year-groups-start-birth-make-children-school-ready-says-report.html
"The authors believe such a concept - in which babies enter Year One at birth - would ensure parents understand the 'health and education cycle' starts when the child is born, not when they start school."
The Scottish surveillance scandal - I don't think that is too strong a word - has recently been exposed in a most eloquent manner by Kenneth Roy , an old school investigative journalist with his own online publication. I have posted all the recent coveragge on this discussion thread. Please take the time to read - it really is of relevance SOTB
Contact point is still being used in my local authority. I know this for a fact. Its not part of a national system but it was so close to complete it was commissioned anyway.
The number of abused children coming into the system is growing anually at a rate well above population growth. Again, figures for my local authority, your area may have different profile. I haven't seen any national figures.
The current systems make it hard for professionals working with children who are at risk to work with other agencies to make a coordinated effort to get the children into a safe situation before they are abused. Contact Point may have been a flawed system but at least it was an attempt to deal with a serious and growing problem.
Because if not what f**king use is it?
Databases do *not* save lives
Staff who can recognize symptoms of abuse (and don't get taken in by deceptive parents and other care "givers") and are authorized to do something *about* it save lives.
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