Bradford catches up on Integrated Children's System

Council was among those to miss key deadlines but has now gone live with social care application

ICS will help protect vulnerable children

Bradford Metropolitan District Council – one of the local authorities that missed last year's key deadline for implementing software to support the Integrated Children's System (ICS) – has now gone live with its project.

ICS is a key part of the government's Every Child Matters agenda, and enables information to be shared among social care practitioners who deal with vulnerable children.

The final deadline for ICS Phase 1B implementation was 30 September, but according to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is in charge of the programme, only 85 per cent of the 150 councils involved successfully implemented a system in time.

In April last year, Computing revealed that 95 of the 150 councils had missed a previous 31 March deadline, causing the target to be delayed by six months.

Bradford was among the authorities that failed to hit the deadlines, but has now implemented software from supplier Liquidlogic to support 764 social care staff at four children's centres, one family centre, 11 residential children's homes and a number of small specialist services and teams across the district.

"Like many other councils we struggled to meet the initial ICS timescale," said Linda Peltier-Binns, Bradford Council's ICS project manager.

"Implementing ICS has been hard work, as it required a major cultural change for social care and a great deal of effort from managers and staff at all levels within the council."

Social care practitioners will now have a more complete view of a child's wellbeing regardless of location or who last updated their records, with better data quality, availability and timeliness of information on vulnerable children and young people.

The system will also feed into statistics gathering for reporting on children's care nationwide.