Engage: Could social workers be spending less time in administration and more time with children?
Social workers have to complete many important yet time-consuming administrative tasks to support vulnerable children and families. Phil Neal looks at the technology that could help free them from their desks.
According to the latest Cafcass figures, the number of care applications for children in April 2015 had risen by 18% compared to the same period in the previous year.
With unmanageable caseloads frequently highlighted as one of the most challenging issues social workers have to deal with, could technology help free up more time for them to spend with the children in their care?
This was a question my colleagues sought answers to when they were recently invited by one of the largest local authorities in the UK to accompany its social workers out in the field. The experience has been critical in helping those of us who develop IT solutions to better understand the needs of social workers, the challenges they face and where they could most easily be saving time.
Fewer clicks = time saved
One of the key things my colleagues discovered after spending time with social workers was that they often had to log on to several different databases to find information about the children they worked with.
A social worker told us that they might go into one system to find the name of the school a child attends, for example, then log into another for the name and contact details of the relevant safeguarding officer.
This could potentially be one of those repetitive tasks that tie them to their desks longer than is necessary. Instead, information from schools, education welfare, social workers and other agencies working on a child’s case could be recorded and stored centrally, rather than being held in separate databases. In my view this would be the first big step in saving time and could make a real difference to the initial response of a social worker if they had all the information on children and families they needed from the word go.
Getting a bigger picture
One social worker told us that they could spend 40 minutes trawling through electronic and paper files looking for information they need on the children they are working with. Multiply that by the number of times practitioners need to do this each week and it could represent a significant amount of time focused on administrative tasks.
Social workers need access to more timely information on a child’s circumstances – this is key to keeping them safe. If a child at risk starts staying regularly with a relative who has a history of alcohol or substance abuse, for example, this information would be crucial to their social worker.
Technology today allows the wealth of information being recorded on children and families to be viewed by multi-agency teams they are in touch with. Alerts can even be set up to let practitioners know if a child known to them turns up at a walk-in health centre over the weekend, perhaps, or if there is an incident involving the police at home.
When social workers have all the information they require on vulnerable children at their fingertips, they will be in a much better position to act swiftly to provide the support they need.
Reducing future demand on social care
Another area where technology can add value is in early help for families and reducing future demand for services.
There are tools that can help authorities to analyse data such as attendance information from schools, postcodes and other details of a family’s circumstances to ascertain the level of vulnerability for children and young people in their area. This can have a positive impact on decision-making across the authority and is already something that those we come into contact with have started implementing.
If a vulnerable child starts to miss school regularly or has a parent struggling with a mental health issue, for example, they could potentially be at greater risk of harm or neglect. Knowing this can enable the right support to be put in place early, thus preventing the situation from reaching crisis point and potentially avoiding the need for social services to step in.
Could this provide a lasting solution to give social workers more time with children and families in years to come?
About the author
Phil Neal is managing director of Capita One, whose management information system is used by 120 local authorities to manage data on children and families.
