Cumbria County Council has implemented a collaborative electronic case planning and management system to improve social care practice and services for children across the county.

Liquidlogic’s Protocol integrated children’s system (ICS) provides full electronic visibility of case loads and replaces paper-based case management, in line with the Department for Education and Skills’ Every Child Matters agenda.

Less than half of Cumbria’s population live in urban areas, so the council needed a system to handle rural challenges.

Head practitioners in Cumbria now have tighter management of the 114,000 children’s case files across the county.

‘There are issues of access in rural areas with pockets of population,’ said Amy Holliman, strategic development officer in Cumbria Children’s Services.

‘Social workers and managers were having to travel great distances before the introduction of the electronic system to look at paper files. You could not look at them quickly, but now wherever a user is based in the county, they have immediate access to a case file and all information is secure on a locked system so files cannot go missing,’ she said.

It was important that the system integrated in real time with Cumbria’s social care system. This maximises the council’s IT investment and staff efficiency by ensuring all aspects of a children’s care package is incorporated into one electronic file.

‘The ICS has really improved timescales for completion of assessments, which is a key performance indicator for the government,’ said Holliman.

‘ICS is user friendly and supports best practice with clear processes that guide users. Social workers are more organised and focused as the system helps with prioritising. The quality of information and case notes has improved.’

‘ICS, which will go fully live in March, also has potential for managing fostering and adoption,’ said Holliman. ‘We keep developing the scope of the project, it is very much a strategic investment.’

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