West Lothian Council has set up a shared information
system to improve the way it deals with child abuse.
The council says the system will help it avoid high-profile
cases like that of Victoria Climbie, which have attracted criticism
in the past.
Eight-year-old Victoria, from north London, was killed in 2000
by her great-aunt and her boyfriend. A public inquiry said
poor
communication and co-ordination between services contributed to her
death, and said that these problems were not unique to Haringey
council but were present nationwide.
A number of tragic cases have led to the government to push for
more data sharing.
West Lothian's answer was to build a system reaching across
social services, the NHS, educational services, the police and the
Scottish Children's Reporters Office.
The C-ME system, implemented by Visionware in May 2006,
won
them a Intellect-Soctim Local Government IT Excellence
award.
David Richards, senior officer for information sharing, said,
"This was not a knee-jerk reaction, but it was a response to the
general situation.
"The main aim is to improve services for children."
The system allows a chronology of intervention to be built up,
enabling workers to see an entire case history, improving
communication and preventing children from being asked difficult
questions more than once.
It means cross-agency collaboration can continue in the office
as well as on the ground and during scheduled meetings. Richards
said that less time spent briefing other agencies means more time
for working on cases.
The system enables workers to message one another securely about
cases, and contact details of every worker on a case are provided
in the files.
Richards said, "Children can be known to one agency, but the
agency who needs to act may not know about them.
"We wanted to avoid vulnerable children slipping through the
net."