The Bill would extend the corporate parent by bringing in more professionals, introduce a “consistent identifier” for all children, and restrict the right to homeschool. It would create an unprecedented shift of power from families to the state, which will negatively impact individual children and their families and mean that social services, doctors, teacher and the police can monitor and make decisions without mothers/parents’ consent, forcing their own opinions on our families and children. Our children do NOT belong to the state!

We’ve given evidence opposing it to the House of Commons and again when it went into the Lords, as well as signing an Open Letter opposing it. The Bill is still in the House of Lords where it’s been since 20 May 2025.

We agree with Rose Arnold’s article below published by Special Needs Jungle .

The group, Reclaim Rights for Children, brings together expertise and experience around child protection, social work, human rights, data ethics and the use of algorithmic profiling. Their demand is simple: Children’s rights should be respected in all interactions with the State, including safeguarding. Rose Arnold, Project Lead of Reclaim Rights for Children, has written this comprehensive article detailing their concerns.

While extensive debate rages around the pros and cons of proposals for Digital IDs, the government is quietly introducing similar powers as part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently going through Parliament. 

Understandably, attention has mostly focused on the excessive demands of the ‘children not in school’ registers, as well as local authorities being empowered routinely to override parental decisions about whether school is in the “best interests” of some groups of children. 

“Unprecedented” power shift to the State

But the threat is much bigger than just around education. Measures are being introduced that leading experts in child protection, social work, human rights, and data ethics warn are dangerous. Together, as Reclaim Rights for Children, we are raising the alarm that this legislation creates an unprecedented shift of power from families to the state, which will negatively impact individual children, their families, and society more widely.

As with proposals for Digital IDs, the Bill mandates the use of a single identifying number to link records held across different areas of government. It is acknowledged as a lifelong identifier if the NHS number is used as planned. Also included is a duty for the sharing of what should be confidential information, without consent, under very broad grounds. 

Bafflingly, unlike with Digital ID, the serious risks to children and their families inherent in data sharing by the state have been ignored by many. The government has a poor track record to date, and despite how extensively people’s information is already shared and linked, it has not yet been held accountable. Good intentions or not, there isn’t enough evidence of care being taken with people’s data. The Bill also has a woeful lack of detail or safeguards, and includes liberal use of Henry VIII powers. This means a provision is included in a Bill enabling the Government to repeal or amend it after it has become an Act of Parliament. As with ECHPs, we are being asked to accept the removal of rights in return for “assurances”. Children need and deserve better.

Data sharing: benefits v risks 

The government has acknowledged there “may be negative impacts, such as in relation to right to privacy”, but claims that overall, data sharing is positive for children. Knowledge is power.

“We assess these measures will have a broadly positive impact across the affected articles. Where there may be negative impacts, such as in relation to right to privacy, we assess these to be offset by the broader benefits to children as a result of improving protection and welfare through addressing poor information-sharing practices.”Children’s Schools and Wellbeing Bill

Knowing more about children and families, or linking their data across many areas of their lives, can give professionals a fuller picture when trying to better understand their issues. In a time of squeezed budgets, local authorities and others have used data to try to do more with less, for more effective commissioning. 

While early intervention can be a good thing, within a systemic culture of blaming parents and children, this convenience can come at a heavy cost. Indeed, it often causes harm. This is extensively evidenced, including by the academics and organisations working with Reclaim Rights for Children.

Data sharing, especially by the state, can pose serious risks. Far from being a barrier to safety, the right to privacy is a fundamental part of protecting children and families. 

Problems of inaccuracy

Information recording is not a neutral act. Without sufficient care, “factual” information can still be inaccurate, biased, and open to subjective interpretation; something that’s a significant problem. 

When children’s struggles are recorded as “bad behaviour”, it can influence how different organisations interact with them and impact their life chances. Research into parents’ experiences of trying to access and correct social care records showed the “devastating impact that false allegations¹of maltreatment continued to have in their lives”.  Similar experiences have been documented by Open Rights Group about data shared as part of PREVENT, the counterterrorism program increasingly focusing on autistic young people.

We have no control over how data about us is interpreted, or the inferences that can be drawn from it. For example:

• Autistic children have been profiled as being susceptible to ‘radicalisation’. Ofsted training, flagging this as a “risk factor” is leading to increasing numbers of autistic children targeted under counterterrorism powers for non-criminal behaviour or viewpoints. 
• The profiling of children with SEND as being at higher risk of abuse, in part because of misunderstood research, has led to SEND being an accepted ‘risk factor’. As a result, parents have been investigated when they ask for help, something that is deeply traumatic for both the child and the parents, and high rates of accusations of Fabricated or Induced Illness.  
• School absence, interpreted as an issue about individuals as opposed to a systemic problem, has resulted in increasingly intrusive interventions such as parenting courses, fines, and punishment. Absence itself is used as a ‘flag’ for potential abuse. 
• The Troubled Families Oldham case study into sharing health data “long list” of desired data, even included women’s smear test status. When misused to draw negative inferences, it’s a further injustice to SEND parents who often put their own health aside to care and fight for their child’s support. Those with more “alternative” views on health or children’s development would also be flagged, as they are under vaccination data sharing. 

The chilling effect of feeling observed and judged

Feeling under observation has psychological impacts, changing our behaviour. It’s also known to deter families from asking for help. The work of Professor Lauren Wroe has shown the similarity between policing and safeguarding measures in their impact on young people and how confidentiality concerns stop vulnerable teens from seeking help. 

Teenagers’ desire for confidentiality is highlighted in the GMC guidance on sharing information. One of the long list of concerns raised by the GMC to the Welsh Children Missing Education pilot data share project was that it would deter families from accessing primary medical services, increasing the risk for more vulnerable children. 

Additionally, the government has a very poor track record with our information. There have been numerous leaks and cyber hacks which have put children and families at significant risk. 

The legislation: duty to share information and use a consistent identifier 

The duty to share information applies when information is held about “a child, or information about another individual that relates to the child”, considered to be “relevant to safeguarding or promotion of welfare of the child”. This duty explicitly overrides any “obligation of confidence”. The Bill gives the Secretary of State powers to issue guidance about how this duty should be executed. 

We have some concerns about this. “Safeguarding or promotion of welfare” are far broader than safety or child protection. As a legal opinion by KC Aidan O’Niell for the Christian Institute pointed out, being “relevant to” falls far short of the requirement that sharing must be necessary, given interference with the right to respect for private and family life.

Ministers have confirmed the legislation will include “wellbeing” measures in powers to share without consent, across these exceedingly broad grounds. Removal of the right to consent–or not–to information being shared is not a proportionate, nor necessary, requirement to increase wellbeing. Removal of the two-child benefit cap, adequate funding of the NHS so that children are not waiting years for care, adequate funding of schools and of SEND support are all steps that are desperately needed. Wellbeing is not served by bulldozing children’s rights to privacy.

A consistent and persistent personal identifier 

The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to specify a consistent identifier to be used in connection with information that would be shared under this duty. We’re concerned about plans to use people’s NHS numbers for this, which would be a lifelong identifier. The immediate uproar around Digital ID already shows the public has significant privacy concerns with this. 

The government points to powers to link adults’ health and social care records using their NHS number. But the Health and Care Act 2012 (HCA) serves to highlight how much more permissive the proposed CWSB powers are. 

1. The HCA specifies the number is to be used for “the provision to the individual of health services or adult social care”. There is no such specification under the CWSB, or safeguards to limit usage to direct care of a child. It could potentially be used for a very broad range of information and purposes.
2. The HCA specifies it should not be used if the individual does not consent, or would be likely not to consent. Under the CWSB, it is to be used without consent and even if a child or parent strongly objects.
3. The HCA specifies it does not override the “common law duty of care or confidence”. The CWSB explicitly overrides any “obligation of confidence”. 

It should be noted that children’s NHS numbers are already used more widely than health, such as in the CH-IS and on some EHC plans. Children’s NHS numbers have also been used within a pilot in Wales, sharing the records of every single child registered with GPs within the pilot areas, to identify children not registered at schools. 

Professors Ros Edwards and Val Gillies, who’ve carried out extensive research into how data about families is used and on algorithmic profiling, are extremely worried and unconvinced by the government’s reassurances. Consistent or unique identifiers make it easy to link data at scale across data lakes–without needing to pull it into a database–for use with automated decision-making systems. 

“The surveillance capacities and risks of what is being proposed are considerably greater than anything ContactPoint could ever have enabled.” Professor Edwards explains, “Databases have become largely irrelevant. It’s the consistent identifier that will be the ‘national database’.” Professor Gillies

Who does the duty apply to?

The legislation includes several groups as both the “relevant person” to whom the duty applies, as well as the “recipient” to whom information should be supplied, so long as it is for the “exercise of any of that person’s relevant functions”. Again, this is very broadly defined as “a function relating to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children”. 

These are: 

• People and bodies listed in s11 of Children’s Act 2004 (local authorities/NHS Trust/local policing bodies and chief inspectors/ British Transport Police/ National Crime Agency/ local probation board/ Secretary of State/youth offending team/governor of a prison or secure training centre/ principal of a secure college/ any person providing services under s74 of Education and Skills Act 2008) 
• “designated childcare or education agency”. (Any organisation which “has functions relating to the provision of childcare or education” or is designated as such by the Secretary of State.)
• “a person who provides services” to either of the above two groups. 

Our concerns here are that Henry VIII powers, coupled with the broad drafting, mean this duty could be applied to any organisation, body, or person who does anything with children. 

The current government has clarified only that it is not currently intended to apply to either translators or to IT companies, but that it will apply to GPs and other health providers. It’s been confirmed that police systems will use the consistent identifier. Childminders are also included. Voluntary and community groups, including sports clubs, youth clubs, private tuition, and religious groups, could easily fall within scope–the Government has just consulted on Out-Of-School-Settings for Safeguarding

What will it do to the lives of children and their families for everyone they’re involved with to be under a duty to share information about them, with no duty of confidence not overridden? This is especially concerning with autistic children coming under the glare of Prevent.  

What about data protection legislation? 

The Bill repeatedly references data protection legislation, yet as the Aidan O’Neill KC legal opinion explains, referring to different legislation, while simultaneously contradicting it, is inadequate protection. 

In addition, the recently passed Data Use and Access Act 2025 significantly weakened data protection legislation. Again, leading experts came together under the banner of Reclaim Rights for Children to warn about the dangers to children and their families. This legislation created permissive grounds for non-public bodies to process data described as ‘safeguarding’, which require neither children’s nor carers’ consent, nor any requirement to balance against children’s fundamental rights. 

Again, the definition of ‘safeguarding’ is worryingly broad, including “wellbeing”. 

Professor Debbie Watson’s expertise includes how the concept of children’s wellbeing has been defined and used, and the Troubled Families multi-agency data sharing system, Think Family! Bristol. She warns that the definition used “widens the remit such that almost any information about a child could be shared.”

What will the outcome of this legislation be?

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools legislation is written so broadly, we cannot know for sure of its future impact. We must reject these sweeping powers. Even if this legislation were to apply only to the direct care of children, there would still be privacy concerns for them and their families. But there is nothing in the legislation to limit it to this, and more widely, there is nothing about the direction of travel of the government that’s reassuring. 

The last decade of ‘Troubled Families’ shows the current level of surveillance that this legislation will turbocharge. This Bill removes the “challenges” identified in Troubled Families pilots. Professionals and organisations had concerns about the legality, ethics, and impact on relationships of the information they were being asked to share. Health information, in particular, has been seen as a problem. 

Information sharing, linking, and targeting of vulnerable people, rebadged as ‘Supporting Families’ and operating under myriad different names, has shown the harm caused to individuals. It also shows that what is wanted is mass sharing of population-wide data. Think Family! Bristol, for example, already processes data of in excess of 50,000 families. 

A fast-growing issue

The current usage of automated decision-making systems in areas that impact children and families will inevitably grow fast. Despite being evidenced as dangerous and ineffective, it has been part of long-term government strategy. It’s one the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is behind, with his plans to “mainline” AI into public services, and to introduce Digital ID. The legislation is in place, with the Data Use and Access Act having reduced people’s protections against dangerous uses of AI that profile, risk score, and monitor us. 

This is why leading experts in child protection, social work, human rights, and data ethics are raising the alarm about this legislation. The stakes are enormously high. Stopping these powers is a vital defence for children and families against the harm and injustice inherent in this profiling and risk-scoring approach to government. 

We’re asking you to sign our petition, send the briefing and open letter from experts to your MP and let them know you do not consent.  

Find our other posts about the Bill:

• Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Protecting children or punishing parents?
• The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Needs work to be fair to children with SEND

References

1. Sarah Gorin, Rosalind Edwards, Val Gillies, Hélène Vannier Ducasse, ‘Seen’ through Records: Parents’ Access to Children’s Social Care Records in an Age of Increasing Datafication, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 54, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 228–245, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcad192 ↩︎