Child Protection - Information Sharing - SMSP API standards

Become a Spine Mini Service Provider giving access to child protection information from Child Protection - Information Sharing (CP-IS) for an unscheduled care provider using our SMSP API standards. CP-IS is the national electronic database of child protection information.

Your commercially available Spine Mini Service Providers (SMSP) product will give access to CP-IS for your SMSP clients. We will list your SMSP provider service along with other conforming software products in our Conformance Catalogue.

Before you begin any development work using these API standards, contact us to discuss your best options.

These API standards can be used by unscheduled care providers as follows:

Unscheduled care providers

As an unscheduled care provider, your CP-IS SMSP clients can:

• get a patient's CP-IS information, which automatically triggers a notification to the relevant local authority.

These SMSP API standards are easier for SMSP clients to use than our CP-IS HL7 V3 API because:

• they have fewer security requirements (for example, NHS smartcards are not required)
• the onboarding process is simpler (see Onboarding below)

Scheduled care providers

CP-IS SMSP client access is not currently available for use in scheduled care settings.

Local authorities

CP-IS SMSP client access is not available to local authorities.

Information held in CP-IS

CP-IS holds the following information for each registered patient:

• NHS number
• details of their plan - type, start date and end date
• details of the 25 most recent CP-IS information accesses from unscheduled care settings in England
• the name of the responsible local authority - together with their office hours phone and emergency duty contact numbers

Identifying patients

All records in CP-IS are held against the patient's NHS number. It is therefore very important to ensure you use the correct NHS number for each patient.

For more details, see CP-IS NHS number matching information.

Using NCRS as an interim measure

We prefer unscheduled care providers to integrate their applications directly with CP-IS using our CP-IS HL7 V3 API or these API standards. However, as an interim measure, you also can use our National Care Records Service to access CP-IS information.

These API standards can only be used where there is a legal basis to do so. Make sure you have a valid use case before you go too far with your development.

You must do this before you can go live (see ‘Onboarding’ below). 

The following APIs are related to these API standards:

• Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API - use this to find the correct NHS number for a given patient
• Child Protection - Information Sharing - HL7 V3 API - use this for the full features of our HL7 V3 API

These API standards are active.

These API standards are based on our CP-IS HL7 V3 API but with a simplified read-only model and synchronous interactions.

For more details, see HL7 V3.

You need a Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) connection to use these API standards.

For more details, see Network access for APIs.

For unscheduled care providers, these API standards are application-restricted, meaning the calling application is authenticated but the end user is either not authenticated or not present.

In particular, these API standards use TLS-MA authentication.

For more details on authentication, see application-restricted APIs.

Even though these API standards do not technically require the end user to be authenticated, a condition of onboarding is that the calling application must:

• authenticate the end user locally
• use local role-based access controls to authorise the end user

For more details on the calling application requirements, see DCB1609: Child Protection - Information Sharing.

You can test these API standards using our Path to Live environments.

You must get your software onboarded before it can go live.

As part of onboarding, these API standards use the Target Operating Model (TOM) process, which is simpler than the traditional Common Assurance Process (CAP).

Note that in addition to SMSP provider software assurance, for clinical safety reasons, we also need to assure your SMSP clients.

For more details, and to get a copy of the latest TOM forms to complete, contact the interoperability conformance team on [email protected].

For details of SMSP provider interactions, see the following downloads:

• SMSP Common Provider Requirements V1.1 - 23/09/2014 PDF
• CP-IS SMSP Provider Requirements V1.1 - 09/12/2014 PDF

For details of SMSP client interactions, to share with your clients, see the following downloads:

• SMSP Common Client Requirements - 23/09/2014 PDF
• CP-IS SMSP Client Requirements - 15/07/2014 PDF

Both SMSP providers and SMSP clients need the same response codes:

• SMSP Response Codes - 24/07/2014 XLS