Education Select Committee - Meetings, agendas and minutes

challenges in relation to the further development of electronic social carerecords for children.Members recalled that ICS was a conceptual framework developed byGovernment to bring together the key processes of assessment, planning,intervention and review for vulnerable children and their families. An ITsolution, Frameworki was used by the Council to guide relevant staff throughICS work processes to set timescales and help record all requiredinformation. The system provided a single central case file viewed andupdated by all those working with children in need, standard templates,integrated financial data in relation to care packages and performancemanagement information for both internal use and statutory returns to theDepartment for Education. Concerns about ICS IT solutions had, however,been raised nationally, most recently by the Monroe Review of ChildProtection, with suggestions that the system was overly prescriptive and didnot support reflective thinking and risk analysis, was resource intensive,administratively complex, and produced output that was non court compliantand difficult for service users to understand.Members sought the views of several social workers and team managers inattendance at the meeting about their front line user experience of theFrameworki solution. It was noted that significant improvements had beenmade to the local system following a relaxation of ICS requirements in 2010.These included a simplification of work processes, implementation of a newand more accessible training and support programme based on the needs ofthe individual users, improved data quality and revisions of all ICS forms.The new forms were shorter and less prescriptive, provided more ability torecord social worker analysis, reduced duplication of data entry adunnecessary workflows and increased the pre population of data. By way ofexample, a Single Assessment Report, which had previously required thecompletion of three reports with duplication, could now be completed in onereport. The improvements were estimated to have reduced the time taken bysocial workers to complete forms by 15%. The Social Workers were of theview that this had created more time for reflection, assessment and time withthe families and enabled improved capture of assessments and risk analysis.The information was also now presented in a much more user friendly formatfor clients which was important since as much information as possible wasshared with the families. Concerns remained regarding the duplication of workin different workflows and an ongoing development project was in hand toexamine and address this.Management information had also been improved. In particular, thedevelopment of a digital dashboard would provide social work team managerswith “real time” information in respect of critical performance managementdata. In response to Member questions the Committee was assured thatdespite the delegation of monitoring to team managers systems were in placeto ensure quality and accurate assessment of risk. These included a QualityAssessment Team which reviewed case handling, cross team peer audits anda fortnightly management overview of cases._____________________________________________________________________________________________________Minutes are subject to confirmation at the next meeting as a correct record of the proceedings and any amendments arising willbe recorded in the minutes of that subsequent meeting.