Hello
everyone,
I thought
I'd break the 'how successful has RM been' thread by asking for
some advice from group members.
Children's Services
have a requirement from the Department for Children, School and Families to
record abuse allegations on CareFirst (our case recording system) through the
referral screen. Every time there is an allegation that a child is
being/has been sexually abused, there is a searchable record created on the
child's electronic care record indicating whether or not the allegation was made
to the police. The record includes:
- The date the
decision was made to refer to the police
- If referred to the
police, the date this was done
- in the case of each
allegation, the reason why or why not a referral was made to the
police
The requirement is linked to the findings from the
Bichard enquiry into the Soham murders and is being introduced to support an
audit trail focussing on the number of allegations not referred to the police
and the reasons why they were or were not.
Therefore, we need
to create an adult's CareFirst record (containing details of the alleged abuser)
and then link it to the child's record (the alleged victim) through a
'relationship' or 'contact' link.
I have
some questions for the group which I hope you'll be able to help me
with:
- How long should we
retain the 'adult' record?
- How long should we
retain the alleged abuse on the child's record? I think it should form
part of the overall child's record and conform to current RMS guidance and/or
statutory requirements
- Should we inform
the alleged abuser that we have recorded this - in a similar way that we do
when assigning people with a 'warning indicator'?
Is there anything
else I need to consider from a records management aspect? Or data
protection? How other Children's Services records managers handled
this?
Many thanks in
advance for any advice you are able to provide.
Julie
Julie Bee
Information Governance and Complaints
Manager
Children's Services
Darlington Borough Council
Town Hall, Darlington
DL1 5QT
Direct line: (01325) 388979
Internal extension 2979
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