Identification, Referral and Tracking

The aim of the IRT project is to ensure that every child at risk will be identified, referred to appropriate preventive services and that their progress will be tracked to ensure that they do not subsequently fall through the net. Care needs to be delivered where the child is located and therefore we envisage a system of different layers that can be accessed using a variety of access methods such as mobile, PDA and web.

Some of the key areas our solution encompasses include:

	Creating directory services and data descriptions for information stored and available across the local partnership organisations.
	Access to comprehensive quality data regardless of where it was originally recorded
	Pulling, joining and displaying information from the different partner databases
	voidance of duplication and supplication through single point entry to information.
	Creating and displaying standard forms (generally pre-populated with known information), which are then used to capture and automatically communicate with the relevant, partner back-end systems.
	Communication being customised to allow the same information to be disseminated in different ways according to organisation preference.
	Enabling messaging and alerts on individual cases to be made visible to all partners according to need.
	Single access to a complete child’s record
	Tracking of all actions on individual cases irrespective of agency.
	Ensuring that the multi-agency process is auditable through a standard scrutiny process.
	Information systems that support, assist and encourage multi-agency and professions care processes at a local level.

Two projects that highlight our implementation in key areas needed for IRT are the Invest to Save Budget-funded Partnership in Action Barnsley project which delivers active multi-agency working in the field of Intermediate Care using the NHS patient record number to join together relevant data from numerous distributed databases. It includes pre-populated forms, which allow rapid communication of information to relevant agencies and an alerting function that flags information across the different agencies’ processing systems. Essential in the design and delivery of this solution was compliance with the Data Protection Act and Caldicott requirements.

In addition, the Birmingham City Council project delivers an ‘accountable decision tracking’ solution which integrates the official decision-making processes across the City Council, makes all the actions visible across the various processes, showing who is involved and who an action is with at any point, automatically repurposes the data to make it relevant to different audiences and delivers effective procedures for scrutiny management.

In support of the requirements of social services departments, our solution will act at a corporate level, linking to partners within their authority and beyond. We can offer:

	a framework for joint assessment, planning intervention and review
	mobile working support that ensures information concerning a child is available as soon as it is recorded
	core data requirements for social services which will set out the information essential for effective multi-agency practice with children and families and which will form part of the overall information required to deliver and plan services, including a comprehensive electronic social care client record
	open integration layers to support joint working with education, health, law enforcement and housing

We also support the Government’s e-GIF set of standards that define the language that applications should use to exchange information. This includes XML which allows documents to contain data that describes itself to the computer programs that access it, a vital step forward in letting many solutions, often from different vendors, interact with one another.