Overlooking children: an experiment with consequences

Abstract

Since 2001 there has been a proliferation of commercially-available devices that observe children, track their movements and gather data about the routine choices that they make. At the same time, a growing number of databases in education, social care, health and youth justice store detailed information about children and facilitate its sharing between agencies. Some of this data is derived from in-depth personal assessment tools that are believed to ‘predict’ poor life outcomes such as criminality or social exclusion. These developments are often presented as a means of keeping children safe or of intervening to deal with problems promptly, but they leave children with little privacy and create a new set of ethical and practical difficulties. There are dangers that overloading an already stretched social care service with low-level concerns will damage effective child protection work, while any insecurity in the systems potentially puts all children at increased risk of harm. Issues around consent to data-sharing have not been adequately addressed, but the reduction in confidentiality brought about by routine inter-agency information-sharing may deter children and their families from accessing services at all. We risk habituating children to a very high level of surveillance, and yet the possible effect of such widespread data-gathering on their personal development and future lives has not been considered. This paper lists some of the systems now in use or being planned, and outlines the potential risks that they pose to children’s safety and development.