Social Workers Report that Database Doesn't Help

...but will the government listen? It seems they would far rather pretend that Social Workers simply aren't telling them that the Intergrated Children's System (the ICS, the database which is meant to hold social work records), means a lot more red-tape in the form of data input and is not sensitive to client's needs and is therefore not useful for anything other than pretty dodgy data collection.

We might never have known about this were it not for the tireless work by the people at ARCH. They issued a FOI request for a copy of an evaluation of the ICS which the government had commissioned from academics at York University. This report had seemingly disappeared and not only from public scrutiny - there were opposition ministers asking to see it too. Read the full story here.

There’s more in Community Care and a bit in the Sunday Times, where e-caf also comes in for a battering.