Exchange set up to improve ICS

Frustration with the Integrated Children’s System has led to the creation of an online forum focussed on redesigning it.

Social work experts from a number of universities, councils and other organisations, in collaboration with NHS Connecting for Health, are in the process of setting up the Social Care Informatics and Innovation Exchange.

Professor Sue White, from the University of Birmingham, told eHealth Insider local council social workers will be encouraged to share their experiences.

“This is an electronic space where they can put materials they’ve redesigned, which can then be shared in the profession. Then we can start to design a project to try and produce IT systems that support practice, rather than disrupt it.”

The ICS was introduced following the Laming Inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie in 2002. The inquiry recommended improvements to the way that information about vulnerable children is exchanged between agencies.

It also called for improved IT, saying that “information systems that depend on the random passing of slips of paper have no place in modern services.”

The ICS was then implemented in Wales in 2006 and England in 2007. Initially, the government was very prescriptive in its requirements, although these were later relaxed so that councils had more say over how to adapt the system to local needs and to integrate it with their own IT systems.

Despite this, there has been persistent criticism of ICS. In February, the second interim report from the Munro Review of Child Protection concluded that ICS systems remain a poor tool for mapping the child’s journey from needing to receiving protection.

The review, led by Eileen Munro, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, said practitioners needed to be more involved in the design of systems and there needed to be less concentration on repetitive data entry.

Speaking at a session at HC2011, University of Nottingham Business School’s Professor of Information Systems, David Watsell, said he thought systems were more of a hazard than a help.

“This is the information revolution for you. Welcome to it; it’s a disaster. It’s completely bonkers,” he said.

He said 60-80% of social workers’ time is now spent filling out forms on the ICS administration software, instead of being in contact with children and families.

Professor White was also scathing. “The particular noxious cocktail of the [education and child inspectorate] Ofsted performance regime, a poorly designed system and terrible forms, have really created a very unpleasant tool.”

Professor White says developers are still very limited in the systems they can create. The Munro review was set up following further high-profile failures of child protection, including the death of Baby Peter Connelly in 2007.

These also sparked further interest in reform of the ICS. Last year, the Department of Health informatics directorate held a number of events with interested parties to discuss the exchange. Plans to create one were included in its 2010-11 business plan.

The Social Informatics and Innovation Exchange is expected to produce two briefing reports on how to exploit new developments effectively by the end of this year. It will also hold two annual events to highlight new developments.