|
Welcome to the Connexions Maze! Update: ARCH has campaigned long and hard to bring the Connexions issue out of the shadows and into the living-rooms of other ordinary families like us. We are grateful to the journalists who have been working with us to make this happen. Stories have appeared in the Telegraph, Guardian, TES, Daily Express and many other newspapers and magazines, and items have featured on several radio programmes, including Radio 4's 'Learning Curve'. It is becoming clear that concern is growing nationally about the extent of Connexions' data-gathering and sharing. Connexions Chief Executive Writes. Click here to see the letters written to ARCH in November and December 2002. The Connexions service is a government initiative which has the stated aim of easing the 'transition' of young people aged 13-19 between full-time education and post-16 choices in training, education or employment. Connexions is intended to provide a 'joined-up' careers, education, health and welfare service to teenagers in a 'one-stop shop' where each young person is allocated a Personal Advisor (PA) to act as a link between all the different agencies involved. On the face of it this is an excellent idea, but the agenda of 'tracking' young people for the needs of the labour market, regarding their problems merely as 'barriers' to that end, and the sharing of a considerable amount of highly intimate, personal information between many different agencies negates any benefits for the young person. The Connexions service is run by a partnership between local government, private enterprise and the Learning and Skills Council, which is itself a forum for businesses, local authorities and those involved in education. The service is delivered either via a 'one-stop shop' or through schools. It is suggested that PAs are based in a school for one day a week, working closely with Year Heads, EWOs and School Nurses, and delivering not only careers and training advice, but involving themselves with truancy and improving attendance, behavioural problems, motivation and target setting (with access to attainment and progress files), promoting participation in sport and voluntary activities, sex, drugs and health education, and identifying 'out of school issues' which are perceived as 'barriers to learning'. Although the main target group for Connexions is designated as young people who are deemed to be 'at risk of
social exclusion', the scheme applies to all young people over 13. A young person may choose to contact Connexions, or they may be referred - with or without their consent - by another person, such as a teacher or social worker. Connexions depends on the sharing of information about a young person between agencies with which s/he has come into contact - or that the PA feels s/he should come into contact! These agencies include social services, youth offending teams, schools, LEAs, health authorities, local authorities, the police, probation officers and a few more besides. The power for them to share confidential information was granted by the
Learning & Skills Act 2000 LEAs in many areas have sub-contracted careers advice services to private companies. While some of these companies have been formed by pre-existing local authority careers services, many have not. For more information about who is giving young people careers advice or mentoring, click here Young people are asked for consent to share the information which they divulge to a PA, but parents are not thought to be necessary to this process; it is left to the PA to decide whether a young person aged between 13 and 16 can give
'informed consent' - and also to decide whether the young person's parents are a 'resource' or not. We are told by a trainee that the Data Protection Act does not form part of a PA's training. There is no national policy governing the sharing of information; despite the fact that the entire Connexions service is premised upon information sharing, it is up to local Connexions Partnerships to formulate their own policy. Information about the young person is stored on a local database that can be accessed by all of the above agencies. Once a young person has given consent to data-sharing, s/he has no control over who accesses that data. |