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Information Sharing: Practitioners' Guide
Core Guidance on Sharing Information
Why information sharing is important
Sharing information is essential to enable early intervention to help children, young people and families who need additional services to achieve positive outcomes, thus reducing inequalities between disadvantaged children and others. These services could include additional help with learning, specialist health services, help and support to move away from criminal or anti-social behaviour, or support for parents in developing parenting skills. As local areas move towards integrated children's services, professional and confident sharing of information is becoming more important to realising the potential of these new arrangements to deliver benefits for children, young people and families.
Information sharing is also vital to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. A key factor in many serious case reviews has been a failure to record information, to share it, to understand the significance of the information shared, and to take appropriate action in relation to known or suspected abuse or neglect.
We know that practitioners recognise the importance of information sharing and that there is much good practice. But practitioners also tell us that in some situations they feel constrained from sharing information by their uncertainty about when they can do so lawfully. This guidance aims to provide clarity on that issue. It is important that practitioners:
- are supported by their employers in working through these issues;
- understand what information is and is not confidential, and the need in some circumstances to make a judgement about whether confidential information can be shared, in the public interest, without consent;
- understand and apply good practice in sharing information at an early stage as part of preventative work;
- are clear that information can normally be shared where you judge that a child or young person is at risk of significant harm or that an adult is at risk of serious harm.
The rest of this section covers these matters.
How practitioners should be supported by their employers
To give practitioners confidence to apply the guidance in practice, it is important that they have:
- a systematic approach within their agency to explaining to children, young people and families when they first access the service how and why information may be shared, which will build the confidence of all involved;
- clear systems, standards and protocols for sharing information. These may derive from their agency's policies, any local protocols in place, or from their professional code of conduct;
- access to training where they can discuss issues which concern them and explore case examples with other practitioners;
- a source of advice and support on information sharing issues.
The statutory guidance on section 11 of the Children Act 2004 states that in order to safeguard and promote children's welfare, the agencies covered by section 11 should make arrangements to ensure that:
- all staff in contact with children and young people understand what to do and the most effective ways of sharing information if they believe that a child and family may require particular services in order to achieve positive outcomes;
- all staff in contact with children and young people understand what to do and when to share information if they believe that a child may be a child in need, including those children suffering or at risk of suffering harm;
- appropriate agency-specific guidance is produced to complement guidance issued by central Government, and such guidance and appropriate training is made available to new staff as part of their induction and ongoing training;
- guidance and training specifically covers the sharing of information between professions, organisations and agencies, as well as within them, and arrangements for training take into account the value of multi-agency as well as single agency training;
- managers in children's services are fully conversant with the legal framework and good practice guidance issued for practitioners working with children and young people.
The statutory guidance on section 10 of the Children Act 2004 makes it clear that effective information sharing supports the duty to co-operate to improve the well-being of children.
Confidentiality
In deciding whether there is a need to share information you need to consider your legal obligations including:
- whether the information is confidential; and
- if it is confidential, whether there is a public interest sufficient to justify sharing.
Not all information is confidential. Confidential information is information of some sensitivity, which is not already lawfully in the public domain or readily available from another public source, and which has been shared in a relationship where the person giving the information understood that it would not be shared with others. For example, a teacher may know that one of her pupils has a parent who misuses drugs. That is information of some sensitivity, but may not be confidential if it is widely known or it has been shared with the teacher in circumstances where the person understood it would be shared with others. If however it is shared with the teacher by the pupil in a counselling session, for example, it would be confidential.
Confidence is only breached where the sharing of confidential information is not authorised by the person who provided it or to whom it relates. If the information was provided on the understanding that it would be shared with a limited range of people or for limited purposes, then sharing in accordance with that understanding will not be a breach of confidence. Similarly, there will not be a breach of confidence where there is explicit consent to the sharing.
Even where sharing of confidential information is not authorised, you may lawfully share it if this can be justified in the public interest. Seeking consent should be the first option, if appropriate. Where consent cannot be obtained to the sharing of the information or is refused, or where seeking it is likely to undermine the prevention, detection or prosecution of a crime, the question of whether there is a sufficient public interest must be judged by the practitioner on the facts of each case. Therefore, where you have a concern about a child or young person, you should not regard refusal of consent as necessarily precluding the sharing of confidential information.
A public interest can arise in a wide range of circumstances, for example, to protect children or other people from harm, to promote the welfare of children or to prevent crime and disorder. There are also public interests, which in some circumstances may weigh against sharing, including the public interest in maintaining public confidence in the confidentiality of certain services. The key factor in deciding whether or not to share confidential information is proportionality, i.e. whether the proposed sharing is a proportionate response to the need to protect the public interest in question. In making the decision you must weigh up what might happen if the information is shared against what might happen if it is not, and make a decision based on a reasonable judgement.
It is not possible to give guidance to cover every circumstance in which sharing of confidential information without consent will be justified. Practitioners must make a judgement on the facts of the individual case. Where there is a clear risk of significant harm to a child, or serious harm to adults, the public interest test will almost certainly be satisfied. However there will be other cases where practitioners will be justified in sharing some confidential information in order to make decisions on sharing further information or taking action - the information shared should be proportionate.
It is possible however to identify some circumstances in which sharing confidential information without consent will normally be justified in the public interest. These are:
- when there is evidence that the child is suffering or is at risk of suffering significant harm; or
- where there is reasonable cause to believe that a child may be suffering or at risk of significant harm; or
- to prevent significant harm arising to children and young people or serious harm to adults, including through the prevention, detection and prosecution of serious crime.
For the purposes of this guidance, serious crime means any crime which causes or is likely to cause significant harm to a child or young person or serious harm to an adult.
Sharing information as part of preventative services
There is an increasing emphasis on integrated working across children's services so that support for children, young people and families is provided in response to their needs. The aim is to deliver more effective intervention at an earlier stage to prevent problems escalating and to increase the chances of a child or young person achieving positive outcomes. In some areas there is increased use of multi-agency services, for example in children's centres to support child health development; or through youth inclusion and support panels (YISPs) to support young people to help them move away from involvement in crime and disorder.
Whether the integrated working is across existing services or through specific multiagency structures, success depends upon effective partnership working between universal services (such as education and primary health care) and targeted and specialist services for those children, young people and families at risk of poor outcomes. Preventative services working in this way will be more effective in identifying concerns about significant harm, for example as a result of abuse or neglect. However, in most situations children, young people and family members will require additional services in relation to education, health, behaviour, parenting, or family support, rather than intervention to protect the child or young person from harm or to prevent or detect serious crime.
Effective preventative services of this type will usually require active processes for identifying children and young people at risk of poor outcomes, and passing information to those delivering targeted support. Practitioners sometimes express concern about how this can be done lawfully.
Seeking consent should be the first option. Practitioners in universal, targeted and specialist services, including multi-agency services, should proactively inform children, young people and families, when they first engage with the service, about their service's policy on how information will be shared, and seek their consent. The approach to sharing information should be explained openly and honestly. Where this is done, young people and families will be aware how their information may be shared, and experience shows that most will give consent.
Information which is not confidential may generally be shared where that is necessary for the legitimate purposes of preventative work. Where information is confidential, however, and consent is refused, that should be respected, unless in the practitioner's professional judgment on the facts of the case, the public interest justifies the sharing of information. The Confidentiality Section above explain this and make it clear that there will be cases where practitioners are justified in sharing confidential information without consent in order to make decisions on whether to share further information or take action.
Sharing information where there are concerns about significant harm
It is critical that all practitioners working with children and young people are in no doubt that where they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child or young person may be suffering or may be at risk of suffering significant harm, they should always consider referring their concerns to children's social care. While, in general, you should seek to discuss any concerns with the family and, where possible, seek their agreement to making referrals to children's social care, this should only be done where such discussion and agreement-seeking will not place a child at increased risk of significant harm or lead to interference with any potential investigation. The child's interests must be the overriding consideration in making any such decisions.
In some situations there may be a concern that a child or young person may be suffering or at risk of significant harm or of causing serious harm to others, but you may be unsure whether what has given rise to your concern constitutes 'a reasonable cause to believe'. In these situations, the concern must not be ignored. You should always talk to someone to help you decide what to do - a lead person on child protection, a Caldicott guardian, or a discussion with a trusted colleague or another practitioner who knows the child. The decision, to share information or not, should be recorded.
Significant harm to children and young people can arise from a number of circumstances - it is not restricted to cases of deliberate abuse or gross neglect. For example a baby who is severely failing to thrive for no known reason could be suffering significant harm but equally could have an undiagnosed medical condition. If the parents refuse consent to further medical investigation or an assessment, then you may still be justified in sharing information for the purposes of helping ensure that the causes of the failure to thrive are correctly identified.,
Similarly, serious harm to adults is not restricted to cases of extreme physical violence. For example, the cumulative effect of repeated abuse or threatening behaviour or the theft of a car for joyriding may well constitute a risk of serious harm. Again, it may be justified to share information without consent for the purposes of identifying children or young people for whom preventative interventions in relation to such behaviour are appropriate. |