Tribal’s Children’s Social Care Record (CSCR) is a software application specifically designed to provide an innovative approach to supporting effective practice in children’s social care. Tribal has spearheaded a collaborative approach with a small number of partner authorities and Integrated Children’s Systems (ICS) experts to arrive at a new model of case recording to replace the discredited ‘compliant’ ICS's which were mandated by the last government and which the recent report by Eileen Munro, criticised as ‘substantial obstacles to good practice’ (Munro-Final Report: 7.16).
Tribal has worked closely with local authorities who have accepted that ‘a major challenge for local redesign is to develop, with social workers, new ICT systems to meet their case recording needs’ (Munro-Final Report: 7.16).
The application provides a re-think of the fundamental requirements. It offers all the case management tools required for the broad range of services and support that children need along with a strong focus on family-based recording. For each family member there is one single running record which centralises the recording process and makes it possible for multiple practitioners to contribute whatever their speciality. Integration with Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and SharePoint (or a local EDRMS) are standard, ensuring that a composite record can be produced.
Utilising a modular framework the system supports modules for the recruitment and training of foster carers and adopters and a comprehensive financial component enables the calculation of administration, foster carer, adopter and other allowances. The system can also be configured to support early intervention programmes and the Common Assessment Framework, i.e. the range of services that might be employed prior to referral to social care or once social care involvement has ended.
Employing a ‘human-centred’ design approach has ensured that the system is highly intuitive, easy to use and flexible to the needs of practitioners and managers. In addition the system provides a level of data accuracy to enable any local authority to meet its obligations around in-depth management information reporting, performance analysis and provision of statutory return outputs.