Children’s Services:
Information, Strategy and
Practice
Ruth Rogan - Newcastle
Roger Vaughan cSBI
Where we were…
• Children Act
• Legislative framework for what is
offered to ‘children in need’
• Silo based services
• Concentration on acute issues
• Lack of multi agency information sharing
• Service based output performance
Where we are going?
• Green paper > new Children Bill
• Good outcomes for all children/young
people
• Focus on prevention/supporting
‘vulnerability’
• “Joined up problems need joined up
solutions” - transformed services
• Multi agency working - which entails
information sharing
The new landscape of inclusion
• A rights based approach to desired
outcomes for all children and young
people in Newcastle:
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Healthy
Safe
Fulfilled
Participating
Economically included
Mapping the landscape
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Develop a map of existing provision.
Communicate the landscape.
Understand the resourcing of provision.
Change the landscape/resourcing
responding to policy, practice, children
and young peoples’ agenda.
Universal
Targeted
Health
Education
Family Support
Sure Start
Children with
Disabilities
‘Hubs’
HS
Connexions
Children’s Fund
CWD
Specialist
CAMHS
DAT
YOT
Hosp’t
Serv’s
Drug
Action
Team
Youth
Offending
Team
SEN
Special
Educational
LD
needs
Learning
Disabilities
Child & Adolescent
Mental Health Service
Universal
Targeted
Health
Education
ISA
‘Hubs’
SEN
LD
Area Child
Protection
Committee
Child Protection
Adoption & Fostering
Rehabilitative
Sure Start
Looked After Children
DAT
YOT
Children’s Fund
CWD
HS
Connexions
Family Support
C&AMHS
Specialist
Universal
Targeted
Health
Education
ISA
‘Hubs’
YOT
SEN
LD
Area Child
Protection
Committee
Child Protection
Adoption & Fostering
Looked After Children
DAT
Rehabilitative
Local
Children’s Fund
Preventative
Sure Start
Strategy
CWD
HS
Connexions
Family Support
CAMHS
Specialist
Understanding practice
• Ethnographic analysis – understanding the practitioner’s world
through the eyes of practitioners.
– Understanding the parents and carers
world through their eyes to allow
practitioners to make sense of it.
– Understanding the world of service
managers.
What does this look like to
different participants?
We must recognise four ‘world views’ held by:
• Citizens/service users
• Service delivery practitioners/managers
• Corporate commissioning
• National governance
Citizens/service users
• This view includes
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the public,
service users,
their families,
supporting social networks,
self-help and community groups…
• It is where vulnerability is experienced.
• Q - “Who can advise or help us?”
Service delivery
• This includes service delivery
practitioners including preventative,
targeted, specialist and protection
services, GPs, hospitals and schools,
voluntary organisations, one-stop-shops..
• This is where vulnerability is observed.
• Q - “Who needs help from us?”
• Q – “How can we best shape that help?”
Corporate commissioning
• Includes those who frame local
political/professional priorities through
understanding the demographics, making
sense of national policies and who
configure services.
• They are accountable for ‘public value’
• Q- “How do we tackle social exclusion in
Newcastle?”
National governance
• This includes government legislation,
guidance, league tables.
• Professional bodies/codes of practice.
• Representative organisations, lobbying.
• Q- “How do we resolve national
spending priorities?”
Common processes
Each of these ‘worlds’ involves:
• Making sense of what is going on in our
own and other ‘worlds.’
• Making strategies for what we should
do in the future.
• Doing what we do today (operational
practice)
….and information systems?
• People carrying out these processes in
different ‘worlds’ need to:
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Message
Publish, search and collate
Transact
Co-ordinate
• How are these needs met by current
information systems?
Typically…
Citizens
Sense
making
Web?
Digital tv?
Web?
Service
Delivery
Corporate
Web?
Comm’ning
National
PAF?
Governance
Strategic
thinking
?
Assessing
outcomes?
GIS?
Outcomes?
‘research’
‘surveys’
Operational
practice
E-booking??
Directories
Care record
ICS, IRT…..
Finance, HR
Web
E-pubs
Confidentiality in a multi agency
information architecture
People in each ‘world’ need to:
• Recognise the role of consent to
information sharing.
• Be able to share information with people
who need it to provide or receive care.
• Be confident about the security and
legality of information sharing.
• Take part in the governance of
information and its use.
…and it’s all changing!
• And it always will…can we keep up?
• A move away from service led provision
• Silo-based policies and fixed
information systems applications will
hold us back!
• How can practitioners make sure that
they get what they want/need from
information systems for their multi
agency practice?
….multi agency working is hard!
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“Different professional cultures.
Different statutory responsibilities.
Availability of time, people, resources.
Different agency structures.
Perceptions of professional group status
Different conditions of professional
work”.
Towards a new information
architecture
• We need a ‘Big Picture’ of the role of
information in social care.
– To reflect the different needs of
different actors in their ‘worlds’.
– To be sustainable in the face of continuous
change.
– To be achievable incrementally.
Governance
• “Information architecture is more than
technology – it’s a powerful form of
governance.”
• “Outsourcing architecture is effectively
the outsourcing of policy making.”
Do we want to outsource policy?
• The governance of this continually
changing landscape is essential.
Governance
• The architecture of services and
information architecture must be
developed together.
• But if senior managers in the world of
corporate commissioning are to take
responsibility for policy towards
architecture they must understand the
capabilities of ICT.
Developing systems with
practitioners - VESCR
• How can practitioners be sure they have
seen all appropriate case information?
• How can we be sure we are talking
about the right/same individual(s)?
• How can we collate records and
documents?
• Can we display complete chronologies?
Components of a solution
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Practitioners articulate their ‘workflow’.
(processes maps are a partial answer.)
Rapid prototyping of systems.
Practitioners appropriate the process.
IT suppliers concentrate on providing
the capabilities to be appropriated by
practitioners.
• This is an infrastructural approach.
Developing a strategy for
children and young people
• Making sense of:
– the tidal waves of national policies and
guidance.
– local political and professional priorities.
– the views of children and young people,
their families and carers.
• Building a strategic process
Participation
• Children and young people have the right
to be heard and describe their ‘world’.
• Participation is beyond consultation - it
is a means to a ‘political’ end.
• The test is - what change is sought by
participation by children and young
people – and has it happened?
Governance structure
• The aim of the strategy for Newcastle’s
Children and Young People is to improve
the lives of all children and young people
significantly.
• The Strategic Partnership Board is a
multi agency group, independently
chaired with representation from a wide
range of statutory and voluntary
agencies
Governance - Board tasks
• Sustain the strategic partnership
• Implement the participation strategy
• Improve service configurations
• Co-ordinate commissioning
• Undertake Information governance
• Become a learning organisation
• Win funding
And collaborate with other partnerships.
Challenges ahead
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Legal basis for partnership working
Involving service users/citizens
Sustaining multi agency working
Governing information sharing
Developing a sustainable architecture of
information systems and services
• Linking architectures – people move there are other partnerships out there!