Quarry House
Quarry Hill
Leeds
LS2 7UE
Xxx
Director for Children’s Services
Xxx Council
Date
RE: LETTER OF AGREEMENT
Between the following parties:


NHS England
Xxx Council
Dear Sir / Madam
Further to the recent engagement with the Child Protection-Information Sharing
project team, this letter is to confirm the actions that you will need to take to
deliver the national Child Protection – Information Sharing solution, and to obtain
your acceptance of the proposed terms and conditions.
Your support, together with that of the other local authorities, is key to ensuring
that we achieve complete coverage across the whole of England. Nationwide
coverage will ensure that vulnerable children migrating across boundaries are
visible to all urgent care health settings, and will allow you to see where children
(in the CP-IS cohort1) have visited the NHS for unscheduled care.
Background to solution
The Child Protection – Information Sharing (CP-IS) solution is a NHS England
sponsored work programme dedicated to developing an information sharing
solution that will deliver a higher level of protection to children who visit NHS
unscheduled care settings such as accident and emergency wards, ambulance
service, maternity, minor injury units, out of hours, paediatric wards and walk-in
centres.
It proposes to do so by connecting local authorities’ child protection social care IT
CP-IS Cohort: Child Protection – Information Sharing project, where children are subject to a Child Protection Plan,
Looked After or unborn children subject to a Child Protection Plan.
1
High quality care for all, now and for future generations
systems with those used by staff in NHS unscheduled care so that vital child
protection information can be shared. The information sharing focuses on three
specific categories of child only:



Those with a Child Protection Plan
Those classed as Looked After by the local authority (full, interim and
voluntary care orders)
Any unborn child that has a Child Protection Plan against it
Only a flag of the status of these children will be shared not the detail of the plans
or looked after situation. See Appendix B for the dataset and Appendix C for the
process diagram.
What NHS England will do:

NHS England is funding the development of changes necessary to the
main children’s social care systems (CSCS) through agreements with a
range of ‘primary changer’ local authorities. These changes will be
available as an update from your system provider, and will be made
available to your local authority as a no cost upgrade to your current
solution. There may be a small increase in your on-going support costs.
NHS England can only fund the capital element of the project with local
authority systems suppliers. However, the benefits of the solution should
vastly outweigh the increased support costs.

NHS England will also provide a helpline alongside your systems supplier
during the installation and initial operation of the new solution.

NHS England will also provide a service during 2015-16 to provide you
with the NHS numbers for the initial upload of records from your children’s
social care system to the CP-IS.

To demonstrate openness, transparency and your commitment to the
project, NHS England will publish your organisation’s name on the CP-IS
website: https://www.digital.nhs.uk/child-protection-information-sharing
What do you as the Local Authority need to do?

Adopt and implement the free upgrade of your local children’s social care
system from August 2014 and work with your supplier and NHS England
to ensure it is successfully and regularly sending and receiving updates for
the children involved.

Ensure that when a child is newly subject to a protection plan or who
becomes looked after by the local authority that the health worker
attending the case conference for the child, supplies the NHS number for
that child to be populated on your local children’s social care system. The
NHS number is needed to link the two systems together (health / social
care), so it is key that this information correctly collected.
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
Provide, at an agreed date prior to the start of the project, an electronic list
of children that fall within the CP-IS cohort at your local authority. This will
enable NHS England to provide you with the NHS numbers to populate
your local system.

When the system is live NHS England would like to ensure that they get
up to date information on children at risk through the automated process
every 24 hours. You will need to ensure that the information on your local
children’s social care system is as up to date and accurate as possible for
this specific group of children. Health workers using the solution will expect
the data to be no more than 2 working days out of date from the last case
conference for the child or other major change to their circumstance.
Please see Appendix A for more detail on these requirements.

To ensure the solution is delivering value for money, your Local Authority
will complete a baseline benefits audit and annual benefit realisation
surveys distributed by the NHS England.
Your efforts to help deliver this solution are greatly appreciated by NHS England
and NHS staff working in unscheduled care. Please return the attached Letter of
Acceptance to confirm the time frame for implementation of the new service to
[email protected] by XXX. For more information on the project please
go to https://www.digital.nhs.uk/child-protection-information-sharing.
Signed on Behalf of NHS England
Hilary Garratt
Director of Nursing
NHS England
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APPENDIX A – Data sharing responsibility

NHS England

XXX Council hereby known as [LA]
The [LA] will:

The [LA], when disclosing personal information to NHS England or the
National Health Service under these arrangements, is responsible for
ensuring that there is a secure basis in law for the disclosure. This means
that in each case they shall comply with the Data Protection Act, and shall
have either obtained explicit consent or can document that there is an
overriding public interest in disclosing personal information without
consent because of a perceived risk of significant harm to the child.

The [LA] when disclosing personal information to NHS England or the
National Health Service under these arrangements is responsible for
ensuring that the data is accurate and up-to-date. Where data quality
issues are reported by NHS England or the National Health Service, the
[LA] shall resolve and reissue in a prompt manner.

The [LA] to ensure that data shared to be no more than 2 working days out
of date from the last case conference for the child or other major change to
their circumstances.
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APPENDIX B – Dataset to be shared
What information is shared from Local Authority to NHS:
NHS Number
Local Authority Child Identity Number
Source Organisation Name
Source Organisation Code
Source Organisation Telephone No.
CPP Start Date
CPP End Date
CPP Delete Date
Looked After Child Start Date
Looked After Child End Date
Looked After Child Delete Date
Unborn Child CPP Start Date
Unborn Child CPP End Date
Unborn Child Delete Date
What information is generated and returned to Local Authorities and NHS
Query Date and Time
Clinician Name who made the Query
Health Organisation of Querying Clinician
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APPENDIX C – Process Diagram
CP-IS Process_01: Overview
Children’s Social Care
Systems (CSCS)
Child Protection Information Sharing Service
(CP-IS/ NHS SPINE)
Unscheduled Care Setting
Systems
11. View Child
Protection
Information
within SCRa
1. Child Protection
Information
captured Locally
2. Recorded within
Children’s Social
Care System (CSCS)
10. Child Protection
Audit Log
Information
3. Stored
Child Protection
Information Secure File
transfer client
Acknowledgement Reponses
sent back to CSCS
12. Clinician/ Admin
Staff search SCRa
9. Create Child Care
Alert Tab within
SCRa
8. Store/ Update
CP-IS
12. Clinician/Admin
Staff query CP-IS
though their
systems via
integrated option
Yes
4. File for
Transfer
(XML)
5. Child
Protection
Information
File Transfer
Server
Validate
NHS
Number
6. Patient
Demographics
Service
7. NHS Numbers
Validated?
No - Error Responses
sent to relevant Children’s Social Care System
CPIS Process_01: Overview
Version: v0.8
Date: 23/10/2012
High quality care for all, now and for future generations