I was at a workshop yesterday at the King’s Fund, jointly organised by the UK Faculty of Health Informatics and Sue White, Professor of Social Work at the University of Lancaster, who is also a member of the Social Work Task Force.

The workshop was aimed at one particular area raised by the Task Force’s report, relating to the underpinning information systems and technologies. The report wants information systems to enable “social workers to carry out the vital tasks of record keeping and datasharing safely and efficiently, and which allow them to inform and influence the introduction of new systems, so that these suit their needs and the needs of good social work”.

The event brought together a number of people from a range of backgrounds, and is very much a stage in an ongoing process. Prof Sue White and Prof David Wastell gave presentations which looked at aspects of the Baby Peter case, the Integrated Children’s System, work in Kensington and Chelsea on developing their own ICS, and the design of systems.

There was a enthusiastic debate, with plenty of criticism of ICS (‘debacle’ and ‘you could not make it up’) and the processes which led to its development and implementation, and the time it took to flag up the problems with it. There was agreement on the need for systems which are fundamentaly designed to help the practitioner in their work with service users, and to support their decision making, and from which data is aggregated for management purposes, as opposed to top-down systems designed to support performance management and policy monitoring.

There was clarity over the cultural and political environment in which social workers practice and its impact on the way systems are used, and the extent to which rising demand, and rising awareness of risks and concern over protecting one’s own liability and in meeting targets, rather than focussing on the successful outcomes appropriate to each case.

It was an interesting day, and a complement to FutureGov’s Safeguarding2.0 workshop I was at a few weeks ago. The workshop, thanks to the experience of Mike Lauerman, avoided the pitfall of simply being a talking shop, and three priorities were identified (see the video below). There will be a Ning network set up to take this work forward. If you’re interested in contributing, contact Bruce Elliott (bruceelliott@nhs.net).

I took the opportunity to grab a couple of video interviews.