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Information sharing - has 12 months of clear guidance lifted the fog ?
23 April 2007
We all know that sharing relevant information about children is
essential, not only to protect them from harm, but also to promote
their welfare and to ensure that children and young people with
additional needs get the services they require. The Government
appreciated the importance of information sharing and made it the
cornerstone of its Every Child Matters strategy.
Information Sharing: Practitioners' Guide came out in April
2006. Representatives from a wide range of professional and
regulatory bodies including health, education, social care and
police, and both statutory and voluntary agencies, were invited to
share their views on the guidance prior to its release.
A public consultation attracted over 250 responses from
practitioners and managers. The views of children and young people
were also sought. As a result of this consultation, the government
found that the key factor in many serious case reviews was a
failure to record and share information and a failure to understand
its significance. There was also clear evidence that practitioners
felt constrained from sharing information by the uncertainty of the
law. As a result, information sharing practices across agencies and
across the country varied enormously, potentially to the detriment
of the child.
The guidance on best practice for sharing information has been
with us for just over a year now. It aimed to cut through the fog
of uncertainty surrounding the Data Protection Act and its Schedule
1 and 2 exceptions and provide simple guidance that told everyone
working with children exactly what information you could share and
in what circumstances to share it.
In fact, the Information Commissioner himself, Richard Thomas,
says in the introduction to the guidance that “ensuring that
children and young people are kept safe and receive the support
they need when they need it is vital. Where information sharing is
necessary to achieve this objective it is important that
practitioners have a clear understanding of when information can be
shared. It is also important for them to understand the
circumstances when sharing is inappropriate. The Data Protection
Act is not a barrier to sharing information but is in place to
ensure that personal information is shared appropriately. This
guidance is welcome as it sets out a framework to help
practitioners share information both professionally and
lawfully.”
This was praise indeed. However, at this point the guidance had
not been introduced so its success or failure in practical terms
was still in issue. Would it be workable? Would it finally lay to
rest the difficulties of inter-agency information sharing? Would
further guidance or Information Sharing Agreements be required? In
summary, has it stood the test of time one year on?
Is it workable?
Recognising that most decisions to share information require
professional judgment, the cross-Government guidance aimed to
improve practice by giving practitioners across children’s services
clear guidance on when and how they can share information.
It also sought to provide clarity on the legal framework for
practitioners sharing information about children, young people and
families.
It did so through the use of simple, succinct guidance. For
example, the six key points on information sharing should be on
every practitioner's notice board. This helpful summary breaks down
everything one needs to know about sharing information into six
simple steps that can be applied to every information sharing
situation.
It should be remembered that the law underpinning information
sharing is not the friendliest. The numerous court decision that
form the basis of the law of confidentiality coupled with the dense
and complex Data Protection Act 1998 are enough to stop any
practitioner in their tracks. This guidance succeeded where others
failed by cutting through the legal web to provide simple,
straightforward guidance on the do's and don'ts of information
sharing.
There is little doubt that for most practitioners, the guidance
is workable. If this were the case for practitioners across all
agencies and across the country it would be mission accomplished.
However, problems persist.
Inter-agency sharing
Information sharing: Practitioners’ guide was the first
cross-Government guidance for practitioners across the whole of the
children’s workforce. The guidance was intended to complement and
support wider policies to improve information sharing across
children’s services.
Even before April 2006 there was plenty of guidance available
which was specific to sharing information within particular
settings. However, as children’s services were moving towards more
multi-agency working, practitioners needed clear guidance in order
to support this integrated approach.
In the introduction it specifically states that the guidance
should be used 'by everyone who works with children and young
people, whether they are employed or volunteers, in the public,
private or voluntary sectors. It is for staff working in health;
education; early years and childcare; social care; youth offending;
police; advisory and support services, and leisure'.
Indeed in March 2007, the DfES published a list of endorsements
from, amongst others, the Local Government Association, the General
Medical Council, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Heath and the Police. So
with all these endorsements from every sector, why are
practitioners still experiencing difficulties with inter-agency
sharing?
It simply comes down to a different interpretation of the
guidance, an issue that most likely stems from the interpretation
of the law that the various professionals have relied on in the
past.
It can be summed up like this: Children's Services and other
agencies whose only role is to work with children interpret the
information sharing guidance from a positive viewpoint. Their
decision making process is phrased thus – 'I need to share this
information. What steps do I need to take to ensure I share it
correctly?' The emphasis is on sharing. Historically, professionals
whose role happens to include working with children (as opposed to
it being their only focus) have taken a different approach – 'I
have this information. The law stops me from sharing it.' The flow
of information dries up.
This different approach to the same guidance leads to
practitioners finding that the information sharing process can be
one-sided and perhaps better defined as an information gather
process by other agencies.
A further problem is the interpretation of law covering
information sharing by governing bodies or professional
associations. For example, one professional body has offered the
following advice: -
"Disclosure of confidential information without consent or
ethical or lawful justification carries the risk of legal action by
the patient and/or investigation by the relevant regulatory body
which may lead to a finding of impaired fitness to practise."
It is not surprising that when faced with this advice, some
practitioners are less confident to pass on potentially vital
information.
So is the guidance helping? A year on and the answer seems to be
positive. The guidance is being followed and, slowly but surely,
most if not all agencies across the country are taking the open,
but professional approach to information sharing between agencies
that the Government hoped to promote. The recently publicised
endorsements should help forge closer multi-agency links and the
passage of time and experience of relying on the guidance will give
confidence to those unsure of their position.
Further guidance and information sharing
agreements
Would additional guidance or the creation of Information Sharing
Agreements (ISAs) iron out the remaining creases?
Further guidance would probably not solve the problem. The
current guidance does not suffer from a lack of clarity, or
ambiguity. There is not a feeling amongst practitioners that the
guidance is difficult, or cumbersome, or incomplete. What there is,
is a different approach to the interpretation of the guidance
amongst different agencies and to some extent in different
locations across the country.
Recently some local authorities have questioned whether
information sharing agreements and protocols are required to
further assist frontline practitioners sharing information about a
specific child.
So are ISAs the answer? The view of the DfES is that they are
not. The decision whether or not to share information about a child
should always be based on professional judgment, supported by the
guidance.
Information sharing protocols (generally at strategic level) and
information sharing agreements (generally at managerial and
operational level) are about business processes, the law and
understanding what other agencies are doing. Information sharing
agreements are primarily about agreeing and establishing processes,
roles and responsibilities, and are particularly relevant to the
supply of data from one organisation to another by electronic
means.
The key point here is that neither information sharing
agreements nor protocols are about practitioners sharing
information about individual children who may have needs to be
addressed. Therefore, the lack of an ISA between agencies should
never be a reason for not sharing information that could help a
practitioner deliver services to a child, and the creation of ISAs
is unlikely to foster better information sharing practices.
Has it stood the test of time?
One year will not have been the benchmark by which the
Government would have sought to measure the impact of the guidance,
and rightly so. However, many positives can already be taken even
though we are only 12 months down the line. The guidance was
consulted upon, well received, positively viewed and most
importantly, regularly and consistently applied.
Practitioners are starting to feel confident that the Data
Protection Act 1998 will not trip them up, that the law of
confidentiality is not unduly troublesome and that, perhaps for the
first time, all practitioners who work with children are singing
from the same hymn sheet information sharing-wise. There's still
some distance to go before the multi-agency information sharing
process is smooth and trouble free, but Information Sharing:
Practitioners' Guide has taken those who work with children down
the right road.
The next 12 months and beyond will be the key period. The focus
will fall sharply on multi-agency information sharing and this will
be the true test of the guidance going forward and of the
Government's attempts to promote a harmonised multi-agency
children's workforce.
This article was first published in Protecting
Children Update (May 2007)
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