Safeguarding: Information sharing duty

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act introduced an information sharing duty to provide clarity for practitioners on what and when they should share information for the purposes of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

Local safeguarding arrangements, practices and procedures, alongside pre-existing statutory responsibilities, then determine how this information should be shared and with whom. As with all processing of personal data, data protection law determines how to do so appropriately. The statutory guidance explains what organisations and practitioners must do to comply with the information sharing duty under section 16LA (s16LA) of the Children Act 2004 and what they should do to ensure consistent and effective information sharing to safeguard children and promote their welfare.

‘Information sharing to safeguard children and young people’ has now been added to the schools list of statutory guidance.