Will you pass the test?

Sheila Struthers

 

Last month, SR ran a series of reports on the threat to personal freedoms posed by a developing system of child monitoring. Today, a follow-up
to that series.

 

Getting It Right For Every Child  (Girfec) and its English equivalent Every Child Matters (ECM) are constantly presented  as having been developed as a result of the Laming report (published on 28 January 2003) on the death of Victoria Climbié or, in Scotland, the Herbison report (released to the public by the Highland child protection committee on 7 March 2006) on the death of Danielle Reid. This cannot be: the line we have been spun is a great big whopping lie.
     'Privacy and data-sharing: the way forward for public services', a performance and innovation report dated 2002, was published by the Blair UK government and set out (among other intended reforms) changes to children’s services which the public and professionals were led to believe were being instigated as a result of the Laming or Herbison reports. 'For Scotland's Children – Better integrated children's services', which clearly sets the foundations for Girfec, was published in 2001. In turn, all these policies are part of the European e-government agenda which emerged from Lisbon in 2000.
     Girfec is only a small part of a much wider system of gathering, recording, sharing and evaluating information about citizens and communities. eCare is a very important part of this. The purpose of the eCare framework is to enable information about citizens to be shared across agency boundaries – a complete view of the citizen.
     Every citizen has a unique eCare identifier, or as one EU study puts it:
     In the absence of identity cards a form of information 'link' across the services is provided by the CHI (Community Health Index21) Number. 90% of residents (soon to be 100%) have the number, allocated within two days of birth, which is their date of birth plus a four-digit identifier. The CHI number functions as a 'pseudo-identity' mechanism, and at present the automated matching of records is successful in about 67% of operations, with manual matching then taking place and any data corrections being fed back into the respective databases. Thus the CHI number provides an incrementally improving mechanism to link records across the domains of social inclusion.

 

     A lot of effort and money has been put in to promote the myth that the Scottish system is less intrusive than its English counterpart, including the setting up by the Scottish government of an 'expert group' on privacy to improve public confidence.
     As Blythe Robertson, the eCare programme’s 'information sharing evangelist' let slip,  the expert group was actually set up by eCare. It has been acknowledged that 'there are challenges to be faced in overcoming privacy and security concerns relating to the sharing of citizens' personal data'. But almost everyone on the expert group has been involved in some capacity with the development of the eCare system.
     Group member Ken MacDonald recommended eCare for a European prize and commented thus, on its success in 2007:
     It is wonderful to see UK expertise in data protection being officially recognised in Europe for the second year running. Recent events have highlighted the need to comply with the principles of the Data Protection Act and I am delighted to see the eCare framework and the Scottish government setting such a fine example to others not just in the UK but throughout Europe.
     Put simply, eCare and Girfec do not fit with the sensible-sounding draft principles which state that 'only the minimum amount of personal information needed for a specific purpose is collected, used or kept; that appropriate consent is obtained where necessary; that systems used for personal data comply with legal and regulatory requirements, and that 'personal data is only retained as long as is necessary and subsequently destroyed in a secure manner.'  
     So what is going on?     

     We are, meanwhile, encouraging areas to move away from a crisis management approach towards earlier and more effective collaborative intervention through our Getting it Right for Every Child approach.By intervening earlier to offer additional support where required we can reduce the need for more costly interventions later in a child's life. Indeed, given the unprecedented pressures on the public purse, it is more important than ever that we work together to achieve this. – Adam Ingram, minister for children and early years
     The Early Years framework,which ties in with Girfec and eCare, will identify those at risk of not achieving government-defined outcomes:
     Early intervention has relevance to a wide range of social policy but it is particularly relevant in early years, which will often be the earliest and best opportunity to intervene. We have identified 4 principles of early intervention. In short, these are:
     • we want all to have the same outcomes and the same opportunities;
     • we identify those at risk of not achieving those outcomes and take steps to prevent that risk materialising;
     • where the risk has materialised, we take effective action;
     • we work to help parents, families and communities to develop their own
solutions, using accessible, high quality public services as required.
     Just in case anyone thinks their family will be immune from all this, let's go back to just a minor part of the vast amount of personal  information the Scottish government intends to gather on every child (or foetus), their family and associated adults, the SHANNARI assessment:
    
Safe: eg child protection, family of concern. Practical care ie home safety. Physical, social, emotional dangers ie bullying. Parental support concerns and identifiable risk factors ie parental drug and alcohol problems.
Healthy: eg vision, hearing, growth, immunisations, medical conditions, ie asthma, epilepsy, attention deficit disorder, developmental co-ordination disorder, genetic disorders, allergies, skin conditions, enuresis, encopresis.
Achieving: eg communication, language acquisition and expression, developmental milestones.
Nurtured: eg provides love, emotional warmth, attachment, play stimulation and encouragement, physical and emotional care and an educationally rich environment. Accessed parenting programmes, accesses healthcare appropriately.
Active: eg known physical disabilities. Receives stimulation and encouragement to learn; child able to access play and leisure activities.
Responsibility and respected: eg any prejudices and tensions, level of resilience, self-esteem, sense of identity, experienced loss/bereavement.
Included: eg support from family, community, child has friends. Appropriate attendance at playgroup/nursery.

     Every child and family will be judged on these highly subjective areas whenever any professional is undertaking any sort of assessment. Look at the categories again carefully. Read it slowly...imagine the boxes being ticked or the ratings being given. How will your family fare?
     What happens if your parenting style, vaccination choices, diet, income, family structure or accommodation differ from whatever the state-determined ideal happens to be?  Should you pretend to conform (where possible) to preserve your way of life? Or risk ticking a few wrong boxes and find your family the subject of even more intrusive assessment and the appropriate intervention?
     Did you accept that invitation for your child to have the swine flu vaccine? Should you own up to having lost granny and the guinea pig in the same week? Oh, and have you accessed parenting programmes?
     You'll be pleased to know that according to Triple P Parenting – the worldwide programme recently offered by Glasgow City Council to every parent – 'Parenting now comes with an instruction manual'.
     To summarise: early intervention is the latest cover story for surveillance, being pushed as the solution to our economic woes. Early intervention programmes identify those deemed at risk of not achieving government-defined outcomes. To do this and to inform future policy requires the collection of huge amounts of data: your data.  

Sheila Struthers lives in Ayrshire. She works part-time for her husband's publishing business and also does voluntary work