Services

CHARM

The Children's Hearings Automated Rota Manager (CHARM) was developed by Computer Application Services to meet the unique European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) needs of the Scottish Children's Hearing System.

The Scottish Children's Hearing System is composed of 32 regional panels. Each panel is made up a panel chair and a number of members who are available to sit at Children's Hearings and make appropriate decisions about Children's issues.

Every Hearing involves three panel members and one of these panel members chairs the proceedings. It is the responsibility of the Regional Chairperson to produce, on a regular basis, a rota of panel members. Typically this rota is produced for a 3 month period and must adhere to the following rules :

Each panel must comprise members of both genders
Each panel must have at least one member who is capable of chairing the hearing
Panel member selection must be random to ensure that the hearing is seen to be fair

In addition to the above rules there are a series of additional constraints :

Panel members should only be scheduled on dates which they have indicated that they will be available
Ideally no member should be scheduled for more than 2-3 hearings per month
Ideally there should be a least a week between hearings to allow sufficient time for panel members to receive and review hearing papers
There should be a range of experience within the panel with no more than one member having less than 1 years experience.

Producing a 3 month schedule which meets all of these rules is complex and time consuming (2-3 days to produce a schedule is not atypical). Up until now regional chairpersons have had to undertake this task using pencil and paper and have received no formal training.

The Children's Hearings Automated Rota Manager (CHARM) system changes all of this and allows ECHR compliant rotas to be produced in a matter of minutes.