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5 INFORMATION SHARING
Section 45
49. Section 45 states that:
(1) Each of the public bodies and office-holders set out in subsection (2) must provide the Adult Protection Committee with any information which the Committee may reasonably require for the purposes of performing the Committee's functions.
(2) Those public bodies and office-holders are-
(a) each of the public bodies and office-holders represented on the Adult Protection Committee by virtue of section 43(4),
(b) the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland,
(c) the Public Guardian,
(d) the Care Commission (where it is not represented on the Committee), and
(e) any other public body or office-holder as the Scottish Ministers may byorder specify.
Agency responsibilities
50. This section places a duty on certain public bodies to provide the APC with information it requires to perform its functions. These public bodies currently are councils, health boards the police, and the Care Commission.
Good practice in information sharing
51. It is important for local agencies and APCs to participate fully in the promotion of a culture of information sharing where adults may require protection, whilst recognising human rights issues with respect to data protection and rights to confidentiality. This will involve agency and APC activity both in individual cases, and in relation to sharing information on general practice issues and performance. APCs will also want to consider the relationship between these statutory agencies and other service providers and to promote the adoption by service providers of the same practices in information sharing and co-operative working as are required statutory agencies
52. In order to evaluate practice performance, APCs will wish to consider an information framework that includes data gathering, analysis, monitoring and review arrangements. Information for particular periods of time and trends over time will inform a Committee's work. It is likely that members will have an interest in the adoption of a consistent approach to data sets and information gathering over their respective geographic areas of responsibility. APCs may therefore work jointly in the development of information frameworks, or may collectively wish to consider a national framework to inform local analysis and allow comparisons with incidence, practice and performance elsewhere across the country. Annex 2 lists information, which might provide many of the items for such a national information dataset.
53. APCs may decide to audit particular aspects of support and protection activity, to engage in occasional case reviews (particularly when there have been critical incidents) or to commission research on particular aspects of protection work. Annex 3 provides a potential framework for adult support and protection audit and evaluation.
54. In view of the importance of information sharing in adult protection, it may be useful for APCs to set out their general expectations and their specific requirements, for agreement by the agencies involved. This information will also support APCs in reviewing their own performance and progress, in order to validate and improve its own approaches.
Publication of information
55. Consideration must be given as to how publicly the APC is to carry out its scrutiny and advisory functions. Local decisions will be required about the publication of APC meeting minutes, about what APC reports should be published, and the form of publication. These decisions will need to take account of the issues of confidentiality concerning sensitive and personal information shared with the APC, but provide public access to information where possible.
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