Delivering IT Solutions
The Scottish Children's Reporters Administration (SCRA), along with its partner agencies, is responsible for providing care and justice for Scotland's children through the Children's Hearings System. In particular it deals with children who are at risk, have offended, or are in need of care.
Many reports, including the Laming Inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie, have highlighted the need for information sharing between agencies who are involved in the care and protection of children. One of SCRA's key long-term corporate objectives is to improve information sharing across the Children's Hearing System - developing protocols with key partners and implementing electronic information sharing with them. CAS carried out a scoping study for SCRA on information sharing in the Children's Hearings System.
Discussion with professions from key partner agencies - CAS met with a large variety of partner agencies including representatives from the Police, Social Work, Children's Reporters, Youth Justice and the Scottish Executive. This allowed business processes between organisations to be clearly understood and allowed CAS to recommend where business benefits might be achieved.
Investigation of existing information sharing standards - CAS met with two teams who currently operate models of electronic information sharing in Scotland - ISCJIS which serves the Justice community and eCARE which serves the Social Care community.
A review of current legislation was an important aspect of this work to frame any future processes and help drive recommendations.
Both the benefits to be achieved as a result of information sharing and recommendations on a 'way forward' were documented. This report defined the scope of further work for SCRA to consider as part of its policy on information sharing.
Since CAS already had a good understanding of both the Children's Hearing System in Scotland and the Criminal Justice System, this avoided the steep learning curve which is normal at the start of such a project. In addition, because CAS is primarily an IT company, their understanding of electronic information sharing allowed them to give insight into how technology could be used to support 'business processes' within the Children's Hearings System.
"CAS has a firm understanding of the objectives of the Children's Hearing System which allowed this project to be carried out in an efficient and cost-effective way. They met with our key partners and were able to make recommendations regarding future work which is being considered as part of the development of SCRA's policy on information sharing." commented Eddie McConnel, Director of Corporate Development, SCRA.