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http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0384.htm
The British Government yesterday announced that it would be issuing unique ID numbers for all the country's children, and that local databases of all children would be set up in order to facilitate information sharing between child- (and not so child-) related agencies. The objective, depending on which Government songsheet you happen to be listening to, is either to provide child-centred services better, helping children to "develop their full potential" (Margaret Hodge) or to tackle child abuse more effectively in the wake of the "tragic death of Victoria Climbié" (Charles Clarke).
The second at least provides the jumping-off point for the Government's Every Child Matters Green Paper, whose introduction (Tony Blair) says that in response to the Climbié enquiry "we are proposing here a range of measures to reform and improve children's care." But it's a jumping-off point that provides an excuse for a characteristic piece of busybodying, with barcoding the lot of them the necessary side-effect.
Victoria Climbié died in February 2000, and her carers were later convicted of murder (a timeline of her case can be found here). Her's was the latest in a series of cases of child abuse which have exposed the weaknesses of the UK's social services departments, and communications failures between the agencies involved. Climbié's injuries prompted a hospital to alert Haringey social services and the police, who between July 1999 and February 2000 failed to take any effective action. During approximately a year in the UK (she came from the Ivory Coast, via France, on a false passport) Climbié did not attend school, a matter which seems not to have been addressed by the authorities involved either.
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