Councils miss revised children's system target

Fifteen per cent of local authorities failed to hit key ICS deadline

ICS aims to help vulnerable children

Fifteen per cent of local authorities in England and Wales missed the revised 30 September deadline for installing an electronic social care record (ESCR) system that satisfies the requirements of the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), Computing has learned.

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 passed at the end of last month, but according to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), which is in charge of the programme, only 85 per cent of the 150 councils involved successfully implemented a system in time.

The punishment for not meeting the deadline was meant to be a subtraction of funding for each council that failed to deliver, but a DCFS spokeswoman said the government had not decided yet whether such a fine will be imposed.

“We are currently looking at the situation and working with the remaining councils,” she said.

The plan for effective data sharing in social care was put in place after the 2003 inquiry into the murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie, where the lack of shared information between child protection agencies was identified as a contributory factor.

All councils’ social care departments should be following a timeline for implementing an ESCR system.

In April this 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.

By 30 September, all local authorities were expected to have finished installing the system and to have made a number of enhancements, including notification capabilities where users of the system are automatically alerted to new case notes relating to a particular child they are dealing with, as well as comprehensive search facilities and the ability to ensure that assessments are not completed until a child has been seen.