It is essential to enable early intervention and preventative work, for safeguarding and promoting welfare and for wider public protection.
Wolverhampton City Council understands the importance of ensuring personal information is kept safe and secure and that practitioners maintain the privacy of the individual, whilst sharing information to deliver better services. It is therefore important that practitioners can share information as part of their day-to-day practice confidently.
Improving the way information is shared
Wolverhampton City is committed to improving the way in which information is shared, and through working with partner agencies a 'Three-Tier Model for Information Sharing' has been developed, as described below.
The model
This model allows agencies across Wolverhampton to build on existing partnerships and allows flexibility for future development. It also means that when organisations are faced with personnel changes or organisational restructuring, only third tier protocols may need revision.
The framework, once in place, will ensure transparency in our information governance practices, and it will aid the documenting of information sharing decisions and actions to ensure they are auditable.
However, by design it will not provide us with a 'one size fits all' solution and will importantly still allow room for common sense and the exercising of professional judgement - as we must not allow the application of processes and procedures to interrupt the flow of care, or potentially compromise the ability of professionals to intervene swiftly at times of risk.
Overview - Three-Tier Model Structure
Tier 1: Principles
v_1__19_2_Wolverhampton_Overarching_Information_Sharing_Protocol.pdf
Tier 2: Purposes
Information Community Agreements are high-level agreements common to organisations delivering health, social and community services.
They satisfy the Tier Two level of the Three-Tier Model for Information Sharing and focuses on the collective purposes underlying the sharing of information within the 'Information Community'.
Tier Two documents describe common contexts and shared objectives between agencies delivering services of similar scope. They reference the relevant underpinning legislation and the associated duties and powers that enable legally justifiable exchanges of information within the same Information Community.
They also provide context for a supporting set of individual information sharing agreements (Tier Three) that determine at a detailed level, how personal information can be shared amongst organisations with the same information community.
Information Community Agreements are to be signed by Service Directors or the equivalent functional leads.
The following documents are currently in development and will be available to download in the coming months; Information Community Agreement - Adult's and Information Community Agreement - Children's.