One record speaks for them.

Right now, no one sees the whole child.

Hospitals record injuries on NHS systems. Police record callouts on their own force systems. Schools log concerns on their own software. Social services keep case files on council systems.

A nurse treats an injury and is handed an explanation. A teacher notices a child who has gone quiet. A worried relative asks the police about the new partner in the home, and is told nothing. Everyone can feel something is wrong. For most children, no system puts the pieces together.

The only one who sees the whole picture is the child, and they cannot speak for themselves.

Existing national systems already share some safeguarding information. Our proposal asks how relevant information and accountable handovers could work consistently across agencies and UK nations.

One of those systems is CP-IS (Child Protection – Information Sharing). When a child in England has a child protection plan or is looked after, a flag can be seen by NHS staff in connected settings, together with a contact for social services. But the flag doesn’t say why the child is on a plan, each agency still keeps its own records, and it holds nothing from police or schools.

So a child who is not yet on a plan or in care has no CP-IS flag, however many concerns have been raised about them.

Everything else moves only when a professional actively passes it on.

And at the border, the picture breaks again. Child protection is run separately in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. When a family moves, the receiving area only knows what it is told.

The published reviews into the deaths of children tell the same story, again and again: each agency held a piece of the picture. No one saw the whole child.

The law just changed. The gap is still there.

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 became law on 29 April 2026. Section 4 of the Act does two things. It places a new duty on agencies to share information about a child's safety. And it provides for every child to have the same ID number on every agency's records. This is expected to be the child's NHS number, but ministers have not yet made the regulations that decide it.

The new duty to share came into force in England on 30 September 2026. It is a real step. Parliament has accepted the principle that safeguarding information must join up.

But a shared number and a duty to share are not the same as a shared record. Each agency will still keep its own separate files, just labelled with the same number. A concern raised on one agency's system will still not appear on the others.

The regulations that decide how the ID number works are being written now. This is the moment to get it right.

What already exists, and what we want assessed

One Record should build on existing safeguarding arrangements. Several systems and legal measures already support information sharing:

We want an assessment of how the following capabilities can be delivered consistently, including where they already exist locally:

1. Earlier concerns.

   Relevant information before a child reaches the threshold for a child protection plan, with a clear professional threshold for recording a concern and a process for reviewing, correcting and closing it.

2. An authorised view.

   Relevant information accessible to the professionals who need it, with access limited by role and purpose and with look-ups recorded.

3. Accountable handovers.

   Notification, acknowledgement and named responsibility when information must follow a child across an area or national boundary.

4. Four nations.

   Arrangements agreed with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, recognising their different systems and responsibilities.

We are asking system owners and practitioners to assess the existing coverage, legal basis, costs, information quality, privacy risks and practical value. One Record is a proposal. We will not claim effectiveness or savings until they are independently demonstrated.

What we are asking for

1. One record.

   A statutory safeguarding record for every child with an active concern, built on the new ID number — health, police, education and social care flags visible in one place to authorised safeguarding professionals.

2. All concerns, not just plans.

   Today's national flagging system only sees children already on a child protection plan or in care, and it is shared only between councils and NHS care settings in England, not with police or schools. Concerns must be visible to every agency before a child reaches crisis point.

3. The record crosses the border.

   A four-nation framework, with the UK Government working with the devolved governments, so the record follows the child between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

4. Accountable handovers.

   We want the receiving authority to be notified when a child with a relevant active safeguarding flag moves area or nation, to acknowledge receipt, and to have any unconfirmed handover followed up by a named owner. The arrangements should make clear who remains responsible until the handover is complete.

This is a record of concerns, not surveillance of childhood. Nothing attaches to any child without a concern; access is limited to authorised safeguarding professionals, with an audit trail.