Steve McCabe – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2014-05-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what guidance his Department will provide for NHS staff on whether to share the information on the Child Protection Information Sharing project with relevant local authorities, police forces or care homes.

Dr Daniel Poulter

The Child Protection – Information Sharing (CP-IS) project will allow the sharing of child protection information between National Health Service unscheduled care settings and local authority children’s services staff only. The information will not be shared with care homes or the police.

CP-IS will hold child protection information only for children in England who are subject to a child protection plan or are looked after by a local authority.

When NHS staff submit a query the CP-IS service, the system will electronically share the following information with the local authority responsible for the child: the time and date of the query, the name of the NHS healthcare worker who made the query, and the NHS organisation from within which the query was made.

CP-IS will not introduce information sharing over and beyond what is currently shared by NHS staff and local authorities.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has published guidance on its website for NHS and local authority staff on how to use the CP-IS system.