Bolton's Child Index and Contact Point
ContactPoint is a key element of the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme to transform children's services by supporting more effective prevention and early intervention. It will support a range of tools that have been developed to help services work together more effectively on the front line to meet the needs of children, young people and their families.
ContactPoint holds a record for every child and young person in England up until the age of 18, and in certain circumstances up to the limit of 25. The records contain only basic demographic details and contact details for the child or young person, their parents/carers and people or bodies who provide services to them. The basic demographic details held are name, address, gender, date of birth, identifying number and date of death where this is applicable.
ContactPoint indicates whether an assessment using the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) – a shared assessment tool for children’s services - has been undertaken for a child or young person. Where a CAF has been undertaken ContactPoint provides contact details for the practitioner who holds that assessment information. ContactPoint does not store any part of this assessment.
Where a practitioner is taking action with a child or young person this is indicated by their contact details appearing on the child of young person’s record. ContactPoint provides a means for practitioners to indicate that they may have important information to share or that they are the lead professional for a child or young person.
ContactPoint is automatically populated with the basic demographic about most children and young people using data provided by a number of national data sources. Contact details for practitioners involved with children or young people are provided by national, regional and local case management systems where these have been adapted to provide data. Manual entry of data is only required where it is not automatically supplied by a system.
ContactPoint does not integrate case records held by different organisations, and it does not record statements of a child’s needs, academic performance, attendance or clinical observations about a child. Although ContactPoint is populated by extracts from other systems, this is a one-way process. ContactPoint does not allow users to access to information held on case management systems or records held by children’s services agencies nor does it update these systems.
