Department for Education launches consultation on updated advice for safeguarding practitioners amid concerns over “legal impediments” to information sharing
The Department for Education has launched a consultation on revised non-statutory advice to support safeguarding practitioners in the duties and decisions they take to share information.
The Information Sharing Advice:
- outlines the responsibilities of agencies and organisations and the golden rules to promote effective information sharing;
- summarises the key responsibilities of professionals who share and process personal information and/or have responsibility for deciding how to process it; and
- explains the lawful bases that may be most appropriate for sharing personal information in a safeguarding context
The last substantive update was in July 2018.
The consultation paper says: “Recent national reviews (such as the Independent Review of Childrens Social Care and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s review ‘Child Protection in England’) have evidenced confusion, anxieties and poor practices of practitioners sharing information to protect children and recommended improved training and guidance for practitioners.
“In February 2023, the Government published Stable Homes, Built on Love, which responded to the recommendations, and has committed to revising and consulting on the Information Sharing Advice to address practitioners’ perceptions that there are legal impediments to sharing information.”
More information on the consultation, which closes on 6 September, can be found here.
A draft version of the revised Information Sharing Advice has been published alongside the consultation.
