An approach to linking education, social care and electronic health records for children and young people in South London: a linkage study of child and adolescent mental health service data

Objectives Creation of linked mental health, social and education records for research to support evidence-based practice for regional mental health services. Setting The Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) system was used to extract personal identifiers who accessed psychiatric services between September 2007 and August 2013. Participants A clinical cohort of 35 509 children and young people (aged 4–17 years). Design Multiple government and ethical committees approved the link of clinical mental health service data to Department for Education (DfE) data on education and social care services. Under robust governance protocols, fuzzy and deterministic approaches were used by the DfE to match personal identifiers (names, date of birth and postcode) from National Pupil Database (NPD) and CRIS data sources. Outcome measures Risk factors for non-matching to NPD were identified, and the potential impact of non-match biases on International Statistical Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) classifications of mental disorder, and persistent school absence (