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The Child Protection Information Sharing (CP-IS) system has reached 100% coverage in London for the first time, flagging young patients arriving at unscheduled healthcare settings to their social workers.

The project shares safeguarding information between health and children’s social care when a patient who is considered vulnerable and at risk turns up in an unscheduled NHS setting, such as an A&E or minor injury unit.

This can then trigger earlier interventions and enable appropriate action to be taken to prevent or reduce future harm happening to children.  Between seven to nine thousand children are now being flagged in unscheduled care settings every month.

Executive Director of Product Development, at NHS Digital, Wendy Clark, said: “The Child Protection Information Sharing system is a fantastic example of using IT to provide interoperability across health and social care and enabling support services to protect young people who are most at need.  

“It is now live in 142 local authorities providing an extra layer of protection for 180,000 of the most vulnerable children when they attend emergency and unscheduled health care settings in the NHS.  

“We are dedicated to delivering the commitments set out in the NHS long term plan to further expand CP-IS into primary care and support growing interoperability across health and care sector.”

Notes to editors

1. Phase 1 of the CP-IS programme successfully delivered on its targets of both 90% of Local Authorities and 80% of NHS unscheduled care settings being live and connected to the CP-IS service ahead of 31 March 2019. In fact, CP-IS has been delivered to over 93% of Local Authorities and 93% of unscheduled healthcare settings – despite 152 local authorities and more than 1,200 unscheduled healthcare settings in England using more than 70 different computer systems.
2. The implementation of this project so far has resulted in more than 179,000 vulnerable children subject to Child Protection Plans, Looked After Child status and Unborn Child Protection Plans to be uploaded by local authorities to the NHS Spine.

NHS Digital is the national information and technology partner of the health and care system.  Our team of information analysis, technology and project management experts create, deliver and manage the crucial digital systems, services, products and standards upon which health and care professionals depend.  During the 2018/19 financial year, NHS Digital published 265 statistical reports. Our vision is to harness the power of information and technology to make health and care better.

For media enquiries please contact media@nhsdigital.nhs.net or telephone 0300 30 33 888. Follow us on Twitter: @NHSDigital