Brent Council has installed a new database to help its
social and health care staff access and share client information
more efficiently. It will also enable the council to comply with
forthcoming legislation.
The London council has used a Frameworki database and management
software system from Corelogic to store 120,000 client details. The
project, which cost about £530,000 - including consulting and
training - replaces a 10-year-old database that held all client
information. Council staff said they found the old system difficult
to use.
The Corelogic system, which was installed in April, will help
the council meet the government’s Electronic Social Care Record
(ESCR) policy. The policy, which will become law in October, sets
standards for keeping records, including the way they are
structured.
The Frameworki software runs on an Oracle 9i database and is
accessed via a browser using a password and log-in name.
The system is compliant with the ESCR policy and the
E-Government Interoperability Framework. It can work with Java and
XML technologies.
The Frameworki database will also be used to allocate jobs to
staff. All social workers will be able to access the database
online to view information about current and future jobs.
Juan Murray, head of information management in social services
at Brent Council, said, "Frameworki will underpin our drive for
further performance improvement, better information sharing and
closer collaboration with our partners in health and education.
"It is part of a wider culture change to improve social worker
practise by giving them a user-friendly tool, we did not just
introduce a new IT system for the sake of it - the old system was
10 years old."
Murray added that IT and social services staff took part in
workshops to learn about the new system before it was
installed.
Since April, 10 of London’s 33 borough councils have adopted
Corelogic’s Frameworki product including Brent, Waltham Forest,
Lambeth, Greenwich, Wandsworth, Haringey and Camden. The system has
also been chosen by Derbyshire and Scottish Borders local
authorities.
Aims of the ESCR policy
- To bring existing social services/health care recording
practice into an electronic environment
- To apply existing national standards for managing social care
records
- To achieve congruence with the NHS Integrated Care Records
Service and other e-government initiatives.