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26 Nov 2008 : Column 1825W—continued
Children: Counselling
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what support his Department makes available for child mentoring schemes; and if he will make a statement. [236950]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The Department for Children, Schools and Families funds several programmes which support the learning and development of child mentors. These include:
Keeping Young People Engaged programme, which supports education, training and employment-based mentoring for young offenders. The Department currently supports this programme through the Youth Justice Board and it is delivered through Youth Offending Teams across the country.
Learning mentors, supported through the Children’s Workforce Development Council. Learning mentors usually work in educational settings with pupils of all abilities who need help to overcome difficulties that are getting in the way of their learning.
Academic mentoring, which is provided to some schools in City Challenge areas: London, Greater Manchester and the Black Country. This support is brokered through City Challenge Advisers who work with schools in challenging contexts based on the specific needs of the school and its pupils.
Business mentoring for 14-19 Diploma students, the Department has a contract with the National Education Business Partnership Network to develop and promote business mentoring for 14-19 Diploma students.
Children: Databases
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) whether pupils from overseas who are boarding in UK boarding schools will be included on the ContactPoint database; [237362]
(2) what steps his Department (a) has taken and (b) plans to take to publicise the ContactPoint database to parents; [237363]
(3) what advance notice parents will receive about when their children's details are to be loaded on to the ContactPoint database; [237364]
(4) what information parents will receive about applying for their children's information to be shielded on the ContactPoint database; [237365]
(5) whether children's visits to NHS accident and emergency departments will be recorded on ContactPoint; [237366]
(6) pursuant to the Answer of 12th November 2008, Official Report, column 1267W, on children: databases, if he will publish the results of the local shielding analysis of each local authority; and if he will make a statement. [237388]
Beverley Hughes: In response to question 237362, ContactPoint will contain basic identifying information about all children and young people ordinarily resident in England up to their 18th birthday, and contact details for services working with them. ContactPoint will not hold information on children from overseas unless that child has a current residential address in England.
If information is provided to ContactPoint on such a child by a boarding school in England, the system will flag the record for review by the local authority ContactPoint management team and, once it has been confirmed that the information is for a child permanently residing outside England, the data will be moved to archive. The system submitting the information will receive an automated “stop notice” asking them not to provide the information when it attempts to send this data again.
In response to questions 237363 and 237364, all data controllers who process personal information are under a duty to inform those whose data they are processing, that they are doing so - this is called a fair processing notice. The Department has included ContactPoint in its submission to the Information Commissioner's Office “Register of Data Controllers”, which contains the name and address of data controllers and a description of the kind of processing they do.
The Department and local authorities are making information available to children, young people and their parents/carers, using a range of channels and mechanisms, such as direct mailing to households (where practicable), at points of service and public areas (for example, libraries), on websites and through the media. Materials include: ContactPoint leaflets, fact sheets and
Q&As (including young people's versions) and scenarios to demonstrate how ContactPoint will work in practice; from a service user perspective.
Activity is already taking place across England. For example, for the past two academic years, schools have included ContactPoint in their Fair Processing Notices to parents/young people. Information has also been available on websites. Activity is also underway in local authorities and will increase as each LA introduces ContactPoint. In response to 237365, the information available to parents and young people will include information about shielding: that a shielding facility exists on ContactPoint, that there are criteria about when it is appropriate to apply a shield, and that a young person, parent or carer will be able to contact their local authority if they have reason to believe their child's record should be shielded on ContactPoint.
In answer to question 237366, individual visits made by a child to A&E will not be recorded, but the fact that a child has had an involvement with a hospital’s A&E department might be recorded if, in the treating clinician’s professional judgment, other practitioners or organisations with access to ContactPoint need to be aware of that involvement. We will be working with clinicians in the ContactPoint early adopter sites and will continue discussions with the Department of Health to ensure that guidance is developed to promote best practice in this area.
In response to question 237368, we have no plans to publish the results of the shielding analysis currently underway in all local authorities in England. This analysis, which is expected to be completed by the end of November, is intended to support local authority and local partner planning and operational activity.
Andrew Gwynne: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what his latest estimate is of the number of users who will have access to the Contact Point database. [240014]
Beverley Hughes: Previous and current estimates have indicated that potential authorised users of ContactPoint could range from 220,000 to 480,000. Our current statistical modelling based on the latest work force analysis predicts there will be around 390,000 authorised users of ContactPoint.
ContactPoint has been developed in response to Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié. Its purpose is to support early intervention and prevention by enabling practitioners to identify and contact other practitioners who are providing a service to a particular child and family. ContactPoint contains no case information.
Access will only be granted to those who need it as part of their work. Users will only be authorised once they have had stringent security checks, including enhanced Criminal Records Bureau clearance and mandatory training which will cover the importance of security and good security practice. They will only be able to access ContactPoint with a password, a PIN and a security token to access ContactPoint. All access will be continuously audited and monitored.
The number of authorised users will ultimately be determined by what local authorities and national partners judge is the minimum necessary to enable effective communication between professionals.
Children: Day Care
John Battle: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much funding will be available to (a) Leeds West constituency and (b) Leeds Metropolitan district under the free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work scheme; and if he will make a statement. [238775]
Beverley Hughes: The free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work programme is supported through £75 million of funding for the period 2008-2011. The programme will be piloted in 67 local authorities, including Leeds City Council. The programme is aimed at lower income couple families where one parent is working and the second parent is not working and wishes to undertake training on route to employment. Funding will not be allocated at local authority level. It will be allocated by places taken.
Sandra Gidley: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much funding will be provided to (a) Romsey constituency, (b) the City of Southampton and (c) Test Valley borough under the free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work scheme; and if he will make a statement. [239845]
Beverley Hughes: It has not proved possible to respond in the time available before Prorogation.
Children: Diabetes
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what steps his Department has taken to ensure that schools provide appropriate support for children diagnosed with diabetes; and if he will make a statement. [235891]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: It has not proved possible to respond in the time available before Prorogation.
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department has allocated for expenditure on support for children diagnosed with diabetes in 2008-09; and if he will make a statement. [235894]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: It has not proved possible to respond in the time available before Prorogation.
Children: Disadvantaged
Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many and what proportion of three to five year-olds in (a) Carshalton and Wallington constituency, (b) Greater London and (c) England were living in (i) workless households and (ii) relative poverty in each of the last 10 years. [224968]
Kitty Ussher: I have been asked to reply.
The number and percentage of three to five-year-olds living in workless households is estimated using the Annual Population Survey (APS) and Labour Force Survey (LFS). As with any sample survey, estimates from the APS and LFS are subject to a margin of uncertainty. At constituency level estimates are based on very small sample sizes and the margin of uncertainty is very large. Constituency level estimates are therefore deemed unreliable for practical purposes.
APS datasets are only available from 2004 and constituency estimates are derived from this source due to insufficient sample numbers in the LFS. For London and England, estimates are provided from both the APS (back to 2004) and LFS (back to 1997). Estimates from the APS are based on a larger sample and are therefore more robust than estimates from the LFS.
The LFS is a quarterly survey and the household datasets which are used to produce the data on children in workless households are only available once a year in the April to June release.
Accompanying each estimate is a confidence interval which means that from all samples possible there would be 95 per cent. certainty that the true estimate would lie within the lower and upper bounds.
Figures for households are based on working age households. A working age household is a household that includes at least one person of working age; that is a woman aged 16 to 59 or a man aged 16 to 64.
Available information is shown in the following tables.
| Table 1: Number of children aged three to five in working age workless households in Carshalton and Wallington constituency, London and England, January to December in each year 2004-07 | |||
| Estimate | Lower Bound | Upper Bound | |
| Table 2: Proportion of children aged three to five in working age workless households in Carshalton and Wallington constituency, London and England, January to December in each year 2004-07 | |||
| Percentage | |||
| Estimate | Lower Bound | Upper Bound | |
| n/a = data not available to avoid the disclosure of individuals. Note: Numbers of children in working age workless households have been rounded to the nearest 1,000 children. Proportions of children in low income households have been rounded to the nearest 0.1 percentage point. Source: Annual Population Survey. | |||
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