The Government’s new guidance on the ‘Information Sharing Duty‘ — which was born out of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 — raises serious ethical questions about surveillance and data handling. The guidance is aimed at all ‘Safeguarding Partners’ which are listed in section 16LA(4) of the guidance:
Local authorities, Integrated Care Boards, NHS Trusts, police forces, National Crime Agency, youth offending teams, probation, state schools, academy schools, independent schools, Further Education institutions (post-16 education), early years and childcare providers, alternative provision, Cafcass, and secure establishments holding children.
The stated intention is that information about children will be collected and shared consistently between schools, hospitals, GPs and other safeguarding partners with a view to building a complete picture of every child’s life. Obviously, and without qualification, it is completely desirable that every child has a happy home life. However, this guidance risks every parent being framed as a potential threat and every family becoming a target for monitoring.
One key change is that there is now no threshold for the sharing of data – any information regarding a child’s welfare can and must be shared among ‘safeguarding partners’:
To address this the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 amended the Children Act 2004 to make clear that there is no requirement for a child to meet a particular statutory threshold before information can be shared. Under the information sharing duty, information must be shared where it is relevant to safeguarding and promoting a child’s welfare, including where concerns relate to early help, prevention and unmet need. (p. 6)
This means that any observation about a child or family can legitimately be shared between ‘safeguarding partners’ if the information can be considered relevant to the promotion of that child’s welfare. It is possible to see a good intention here, but it raises some serious ethical questions when it comes to the long-term surveillance of families, and the collection and storage of huge amounts of personal data. Further, it means that ‘professionals’ such as doctors and teachers will have access to collated information about our children and will be able to draw conclusions about our children’s welfare based on this information. This places an enormous amount of trust in state institutions and the people who work for them.
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the guidance is that ‘Consent is not required to share information under the duty.’ (p.16). This means that safeguarding partners do not need parental permission to share data about children, and practitioners must not delay sharing because consent has not been obtained. Furthermore, the duty applies ‘even where a parent or carer has objected to information being shared‘ (pp.16–17). People who have been trained in safeguarding will be aware that sometimes swift action to protect a child is necessary; and it is right that professionals should be alert to signs that a child is suffering, but this guidance makes it perfectly lawful for your child’s teachers and doctors to share information and observations about your child without your knowledge or consent — and there is no threshold of criteria, such as evidence of abuse, which must met for this to be lawful.
Finally, under the terms of the new guidance, it is not only children’s data that will be shared. Safeguarding information will include information about any adult whose behaviour or circumstances may affect a child’s safety or welfare. Crucially, this does not just mean proven criminal or harmful activities, this also means that information about ‘mental and physical health’ can be shared with safeguarding partners:
‘The information sharing duty applies in the same way, as set out above, to information about any other individual connected to a child where relevant to the child’s safety or welfare… Relevant information about an individual could include any factor that may inhibit a caregiver’s ability to provide safe and effective care, such as substance misuse, involvement in a coercive or abusive relationship, imprisonment and poor health, mental or physical.
Each case should be considered in the context of a range of other factors that may intersect to determine a caregiver’s ability to take care of a child – practitioners should use professional judgement to determine whether this information is likely to be of relevance; or indicates an individual may pose a risk to a child, such as a history of perpetrating (known or alleged) abuse or violence, substance misuse, involvement in organised crime, signs of radicalisation or being considered a risk to others on grounds of mental health concern. This refers not only to adults, but to other children also.’
Obviously, if an adult poses a risk to a child, then the people responsible for that child must be alerted so that they can ensure that the child is safe. However, some aspects of this guidance are somewhat chilling – it seems that it will be risky to attend a medical practitioner for a long-term physical or mental health condition, for fear of the medic deciding that in their ‘professional judgement’ the information must be shared with safeguarding professionals. The reference to ‘signs of radicalisation‘ is equally disconcerting given that this seems to have been left open to interpretation by relevant ‘professionals.’
Overall, the guidance raises substantial ethical questions about mass surveillance of families, the safety of our data and our relationships with the services we fund via our taxes. As parents, we should expect to have primary responsibility for safeguarding our children and, critically, we should expect to use services that are provided by the state, without having the worry that those services are monitoring us. Keeping children safe is a key mission for a civilised society and it is crucial that this goal is not weaponised in a war against families.
ParentPower Team
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