This results in the person’s record being fragmented across systems, which undermines attempts to work efficiently and effectively in meeting statutory responsibilities to support children, families and vulnerable adults.
There are many anecdotal accounts of the duplication of work, stories told several times to different agencies, the not so joined-up view of a child; all leading to frustrations for already overstretched services, not to mention increased support costs across multiple software providers.
Accessing one platform combining social care, early help, education management, early years, and finance management solves many problems faced by councils. One familiar user interface means less training, joined-up working between teams and proactive alerts to notify workers of potential risks. Many councils have been doing this for some time with children’s and adults’ services on one platform. The addition of the Early Years & Education System (EYES) from Liquidlogic extends that approach to further consolidate a person/family record and case management into one place.
A Growing Trend
With 15 councils either having implemented or in the process of implementing EYES in addition to their existing social care and early help solution from Liquidlogic, there appears to be a growing trend to work across one platform. One council taking advantage of this joined-up approach is Wiltshire, which identified the benefits of working on one social care and education management platform and recently implemented EYES.
“Our goal is to provide staff with a joined-up view of children and their families,” says Tamsin Stone, Service Manager at Wiltshire County Council. “Previously, we used a number of systems for early help, safeguarding, early years and education which meant that information was stored in different places and staff had to spend time logging into separate systems. Implementing Liquidlogic means that everything is on one platform, information is more readily available and less time is spent searching across systems. Although it is early days, reaction from our teams has been positive and we are hopeful that EYES will bring great benefits.”
Rochdale Council also saw the benefits of working from one Liquidlogic platform. Already users of the Liquidlogic early help and social care system for some time, the council had a vision to join up services and share information with partners even further. Scott Moseley, MIS Portfolio Manager at the council says:
“We selected the Liquidlogic Early Years & Education System (EYES) to facilitate further joint working across all partners, make information sharing simpler and rationalise suppliers. Working across one platform brings many benefits including a reduction in recording time as relevant information is
recorded once and used multiple times, meaning the need to log into multiple systems has become a thing of the past.
“EYES has a common look and feel with other Liquidlogic applications already in situ, it provides a holistic view of the child and family, supports informed decision making, and offers an opportunity to streamline processes utilising workflow as well as supporting integrated working.”
From Child to Adult
One area in particular that benefits from this consolidated approach is the transitioning of cases from children’s into adult social care. Using Liquidlogic to do this supports a continuation of service provision and provides adult social care teams with a repository of historical data which can be critical. Working from one platform means that social workers can access all relevant data, saving time and eliminating the need to log into numerous systems and join the dots manually.
How Customer Portals Help
In addition, the Liquidlogic platform supports the network around a child or adult with the provision of portals; whether this is to link up professional involvements for non-Liquidlogic users, parents applying for school places or families logging care issues for elderly relatives.
The Liquidlogic system links entire networks of people involved in the care of vulnerable children and adults, and crucially, retains all data linked to that person within the case management system. This means no dual inputting for already busy teams and no risk of data loss between systems.
Not Forgetting Health The key message from the Department of Health & Social Care’s latest white paper drives home the importance of data sharing between social care and health. Liquidlogic is well placed to facilitate this, given the links to health via System C, Liquidlogic’s parent company.
In fact, Liquidlogic is ahead of the curve generally on this and has live integrations across a number of health platforms including Shared Care Records with Graphnet, Cerner and Orion; Digital Discharge in Islington, Lancashire and Wirral Councils (with more to come shortly), the Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) and many more.
This, along with one view of adult and children’s social care, early help, early years and education management provides a rich view of an individual and goes a long way to presenting workers with key data, proactive alerts, seamless transitioning and crucial health data.
For further information about the Liquidlogic single platform email marketing@liquidlogic.co.uk or *register your interest for our webinar; ‘Children’s Services: A Joined Up View on May 13th https://www.liquidlogic.co.uk/the-latest/childrens-services-a-joined-up-view/
Open to councils only*
