More councils miss key child welfare IT deadline

Child pressure groups say social workers find the system difficult

Delays to the Integrated Children’s System (ICS) at the heart of the government’s Every Child Matters policy are worse than first feared, and councils have been told that a key deadline has been put back by six months.

A circular sent to senior executives and ICS project leaders at local authorities by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) on 27 March showed that 95 councils were expected to miss the 31 March deadline for going live with vital Phase 1B ICS requirements.

Computing initially revealed last month that at least 30 councils would fail to hit this milestone.

The memo, seen by Computing, puts back the deadline to 30 September ­ and warns that councils that still miss the new date will be expected to return unused funding provided for ICS rollout.

DCSF said it might also “seek to recover the capital assets that the used funding has provided”.

DCSF has allocated a total of £20m in grants to help implement the system, but just 55 authorities achieved Phase 1B compliance in time.

Some councils could still find the later target difficult, said Colin Gunner, a consultant at local government user group Socitm.

“There are varying degrees of missing the March target. Some may only have missed by one to three months and will see the September deadline as achievable,” he said.

“But a percentage of the councils have either not yet started any ICS implementation, are still awaiting their software supplier’s Phase 1B compliance release, or have yet to contract for any system. These are nearer to 30 or 40 councils, and they may find even September 2008 a real challenge.”

It has also emerged that DCSF failed to fully publish a government-commissioned report by the University of York in May 2007 which expressed concern that ICS “has yet to demonstrate the degree to which and how it is fit for purpose.”

DCSF released its own version of the findings, omitting the ICS criticisms and focusing on the importance of training social workers to adequately use the system, according to Terri Dowty, director of pressure group Action on Rights for Children.

“It is a top-down system given to social workers and they are finding it difficult. It is taking time away from working with children,” she said.

DCSF said it is considering the future development of ICS and will notify authorities of developments in the next few weeks.