e-petition 731497 relating to a disclosure and safeguarding mechanism for at-risk children

E-petition 731497, which calls for the introduction of a new Disclosure and Safeguarding Mechanism for At-Risk Children, received over 100,000 signatures.

The e-petition is part of the Maya’s Law campaign.

Campaign for Maya’s Law

The Maya’s Law campaign was launched by the family of two-year-old Maya Chappell, who was murdered by her mother’s partner in September 2022.

As set out in the e-petition, the campaign calls for a statutory Child Risk Disclosure Scheme, modelled on the existing frameworks for Sarah’s Law and Clare’s Law (see below), but focused on the broader risk history of caregivers.

Under the proposed scheme, statutory services (social care, health and the police) would be required to proactively disclose a person’s relevant past history to the child’s parent or legal guardian when a risk is identified.

The e-petition also calls for the government to:

Establish multi-agency response protocols, particularly where child contact, custody, or unsupervised access is being considered.

Empower professionals to raise safeguarding alerts and initiate family court safeguarding interventions where known risks exist, even if not currently under active investigation.

Government response

In its response to the e-petition, provided on 7 January 2026, the government summarises the reforms it is making to children’s social care in England and adds:

Whilst the Government is not minded to introduce the elements of a Child Risk Disclosure Scheme requiring police to disclose information to parents and guardians, proposals to strengthen multi agency responses and earlier safeguarding help are already included in the package of reforms we are taking forward.

Current child protection arrangements

Under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, local authorities in England must make enquiries to decide whether they should act to safeguard or promote a child’s welfare where they have “reasonable cause to suspect” that a child “is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm”.

The Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance provides more information on child protection procedures and sets out national multi-agency practice standards for child protection. These include that:

• Practitioners should “give full consideration to concerns reported by family members, without bias of prejudice.”
• Practitioners should “never assume that information has already been shared by another professional or family member and always remain open to challenging and changing their views about the likelihood of significant harm”
• Practitioners should “thoroughly explore the significance of the adults in contact with the child and their family or individual histories” (pp89-90).

The guidance states that “practitioners should work collaboratively across agencies to help and protect children through strong and effective information sharing” (p85). It adds that “practitioners should be proactive in sharing information as early as possible to help identify, assess, and respond to risks or concerns about the safety and welfare of children.” The guidance also emphasises that data protection legislation should not be a barrier to sharing information for the purposes of safeguarding children (pp20-25).

Multi-agency safeguarding arrangements

Under the Children Act 2004, three safeguarding partners – the local authority, NHS integrated care boards and the chief officer of police – are responsible for determining how safeguarding arrangements should work in their area for them and for relevant agencies.

Section 16H of the 2004 act requires people or bodies to supply information to the safeguarding partners if requested for the purpose of enabling and assisting in the performance of their safeguarding functions.

In addition, under section 10 of the act, local authorities are under a duty to promote cooperation with key partners and local agencies, with a view to improving the well-being of children in the authority’s area.

Further information on current safeguarding arrangements is provided in the Library briefing on child protection legislation in England.

Existing disclosure schemes: Sarah’s Law and Clare’s Law

As mentioned, the e-petition calls for the proposed Child Risk Disclosure Scheme to be modelled on the existing frameworks for Sarah’s Law (the child sex offender disclosure scheme, known as Sarah’s Law after Sarah Payne) and Clare’s Law (the domestic violence disclosure scheme, known as Clare’s Law after Clare Wood).

Sarah’s Law and Clare’s Law are police-led schemes. The schemes are not set out in legislation but are instead based on the police’s common law power to disclose information where it is necessary to prevent crime.

The government has issued guidance on the processes involved in each scheme:

• Domestic violence disclosure scheme guidance
• Child sex offender disclosure scheme guidance

Both schemes involve a ‘right to ask’ and a ‘right to know’:

• Under the ‘right to ask’, an individual or relevant third party (for example, a family member) can ask the police to check whether a current or ex-partner has a violent past (Clare’s Law) or whether a person who has contact with a child has a history of child sex offending (for Sarah’s law).

• Under the ‘right to know’, the police can make a disclosure of their own initiative if they become aware (for example, through a criminal investigation) that a person or child might be at risk.

Under both schemes the police can disclose details of convictions/cautions for specified offences, and they also have wider discretion to disclose other relevant “concerning behaviour” (see section 3.7 of the Sarah’s Law guidance and section 3 of the Clare’s Law guidance).

Comparison with proposed Child Risk Disclosure Scheme

Under both Sarah’s Law and Clare’s Law only the police have responsibility for making disclosures. This would appear to be a difference with the proposed Child Risk Disclosure Scheme, which would apply to a wider range of services, including police, social care and health.

In addition, under the proposed disclosure scheme there would be a focus on a person’s “broader risk history”. While Sarah’s Law does permit the disclosure of wider ‘safeguarding’ or ‘concerning behaviour’ information, the main focus of the guidance is on the risk of sexual offending and there will only be a presumption to disclose information about an individual where they have convictions for child sex offences.

Unlike Clare’s Law, which only covers children where they are linked to a primary adult who is at risk of domestic abuse (children cannot apply for disclosure under Clare’s law in their own right), the proposed Child Risk Disclosure Scheme would cover children in their own right

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was introduced to parliament in December 2024 and is currently at the “ping pong” stage. The bill would make several changes to child protection in England and forms part of broader government reforms to children’s social care.

Information sharing duty

Of particular relevance to the e-petition, clause 4 of the bill (version of the bill as amended in the Commons (PDF)) would introduce a new duty requiring certain ‘relevant persons’ to disclose information to other ‘relevant persons’ where they consider it may be relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children. This could include information about a child or about another individual that relates to the child. The duty would also apply where a ‘relevant person’ receives a request for information from another ‘relevant person’.

A ‘relevant person’ for these purposes would broadly include:

• People listed in section 11(1) of the Children Act 2004. This includes, among others, local authorities, integrated care boards, NHS Trusts, and prison governors.
• Childcare or education agencies
• A person who provides services pursuant to arrangements made by the above bodies.

The duty would not apply where the person considers that sharing the information would be more detrimental to the child than not disclosing it.

The government’s response to the e-petition sets out the purpose of the new information sharing duty:

By legally obliging statutory safeguarding partners to share information across agencies where there is a concern relevant to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, we are ending misconceptions about when information can and cannot be shared. Crucially, this extends to the sharing of information about other individuals for the same purpose, enabling practitioners to act and inform families as appropriate.

Other changes

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill also includes other provisions related to child protection, including:

• The introduction of a consistent identifier for children (likely to be the child’s NHS number). The government has said this has the potential to increase confidence that practitioners from different agencies are talking about the same child and increase the ease and possibility of linking data across data sets (pp9-10).
• Establishing multi-agency child protection teams, which include social workers and people from education, health and the police, to support the local authority in delivering its child protection functions. This reform is being taken forward as part of the Families First Partnership Programme.

Further information on these provisions, and the government’s broader reforms to children’s social care, is provided in the Library briefing on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (as introduced).

Commons debate on Child Risk Disclosure Scheme

On 14 October 2025, a thirty-minute Westminster Hall debate was held on the proposed Child Risk Disclosure Scheme. The debate was opened by Liz Twist MP (Lab), who outlined the campaign for Maya’s Law and issues with data sharing relating to child safeguarding.

In response, the Children’s Minster, Josh MacAlister, outlined government reforms to children’s social care, including the provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill outlined above. He added that he did not think now was the time to introduce a Child Risk Disclosure Scheme:

I agree with those campaigning for Maya’s law that we need to change the law, and that is what we are doing right now. Given the progress of the current reforms—particularly the information-sharing duty, and the passage of the Bill through Parliament, which is at an advanced stage—I do not believe that now is the time to introduce a child risk disclosure scheme specifically. However, many of the proposals are reflected in what we are taking forward as a Government with the wider children’s social care reforms, and there are other aspects, which I will also mention (c95WH).