Even before Lord Laming had presented the findings of his review into child protection last March, it was clear that a major concern for social workers was the mass of bureaucracy weighing heavy on their workload.
Cries of an overburdened work-force were underpinned by increasing frustration over the government-specified local electronic recording systems that had the potential to reduce the time social workers spent with children and families.
When Children's Secretary Ed Balls announced the members of the Social Work Taskforce a year ago, he asked for one of its first priorities to be a review of the Integrated Children's System (ICS).
But as early as 2008 the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea had already decided to turn its back on a £147,000 grant that would have tied the authority to developing a system that met the government's detailed criteria.
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