Bolton plans to join up children’s services systems

The council’s procurement of a new integrated children’s system is part of a long term plan to link up databases

Bolton council has implemented a new integrated children’s system (ICS) as part of a long term plan to link up a number of its children’s services information systems. The council wants social workers to be able to view a child’s record over multiple platforms rather than having to log into different systems.

Paul Rankin, knowledge and information manager at Bolton, told Guardian Healthcare that historically within children’s services there have been different systems for education, social care, and youth offending, which has caused problems.

“What we want to do is move towards the idea of being able to view a child’s records over multiple systems. So moving towards the idea that we can give frontline staff a secure way of accessing the information they need to do their job, even though it may be held in different systems,” he said.

The council decided to procure a new ICS from software firm Liquidlogic after staff complained that the original system was not user-friendly. Rankin said that the former system had problems with navigation, difficulties with training new people as it wasn’t intuitive to use, and staff having to input the same information several times in different places.

“It was originally designed as a social care system for adult services and it was adapted to incorporate the ICS requirements when they came out from central government, but it wasn’t produced specifically to meet those needs,” he explained.

Talking about Bolton’s ambition to link up different information systems, Rankin acknowledged that it will be a difficult task. “Yes, it’s a complicated thing and we’re only at the first stages of that. What we’ve done with this system is that we’ve integrated it with our education system, so there is now a link. This means that social workers can see up-to-date education information without logging into another system,” he said.

The new ICS has been in place for around three weeks and Rankin said that it has been well received by the “overwhelming majority” of staff. He added that one of the reasons for this is because social workers can now find the information they need a lot more easily.

The council has also simplified a number of forms on the system so that they are less difficult for staff to complete. Rankin said that use of these was previously insisted upon, but the guidelines around them “have been relaxed” to aid the simplification process.

Looking to the future, Rankin said that he hopes the changes that have been made along with the new system will meet the needs of frontline staff and allow them to spend more time with clients.