The children’s commissioner for England has stressed all NHS trusts and local councils must make it a “priority” to introduce a new data-sharing system aimed at helping to prevent child abuse.

Anne Longfield said the new Child Protection-Information Sharing (CP-IS) system – which sends alerts between frontline clinicians and social workers about children in care – had “huge potential to really ensure there aren’t places where children just get lost in the system or not picked up”.

Nursing Times has reported on the delayed national roll-out of the system in the past. In November, only 78 of 260 NHS organisations had introduced it in at least one unscheduled healthcare setting.

Meanwhile, just 79 out of 152 local councils had introduced the system. The original target was for all clinicians working in relevant services to have access by 2018.

Click here to read more: Nursing Times New safeguarding system must be ‘priority’ for trusts, warns children’s commissioner