• CARE for Scotland has given a cautious welcome to the Scottish Government’s revised Named Person scheme.

The Government’s new legislative proposal drops plans to place a duty on professionals to share information about children and families on a general wellbeing threshold and replaces it with a duty to consider if information should be shared. Crucially any decision to share information must be compatible with data protection and human rights legislation.

The effect of this change is that although information can still be shared with the consent of parents, young people and families, where no such consent is given state officials can only share information if there is either (a) risk of significant harm or (b) if it is necessary to do so in order to fulfil a public function. The necessity test places a very high legal bar to justify the sharing of information without parental consent.

CARE thinks that the proposed legislation should contain a definition of ‘wellbeing’. This term currently is not defined in legislation and is open to subjective interpretation. The Scottish Government considers ‘wellbeing’ in very broad terms to be that a child or young person achieves their maximum potential and happiness. The use of this term in legislation poses significant difficulties for practitioners when considering the threshold of sharing sensitive personal information about children and their families.

CARE for Scotland is of the view that a mechanism should be in place to allow parents to opt-out of the Named Person scheme and that the scheme as far as possible should be responsive to families with parents normally initiating any involvement of the Named Person.

We will continue to input into the public debate and the Parliamentary processes when the new Bill receives scrutiny in the autumn of this year and spring 2018.

To read more about the Named Person scheme and our last update please click here.