Survey reveals half of social services care records remain in paper format

A SURVEY carried out in August 2004 among 100 English Social Services authorities revealed that half of English local authorities have yet to develop any level of electronic storage or retrieval of live Social Services care records. The survey, commissioned by Capita’s Contact and Document Services business, interviewed 100 IT/Information Managers whose responsibilities include the administrative efficiency of Social Services across local authorities in England.
According to the respondents, as far as historical social care records are concerned, only a quarter of all authorities have an electronic system to manage these documents; however, the vast majority of authorities do expect to go down this route. It appears that over 70 per cent of those without an electronic system have developed a business case for the implementation of an Electronic Storage Care Records (ESCR) solution.

“Our survey reveals that the majority of authorities intend to take action and develop or purchase a system to manage live or newly created records within the next year. One of the real drivers is that all Social Services departments are expected to have electronic records for their new cases by October 2005, and all live cases a year later. The business case is very clear both for citizens in terms of the improved speed and efficiency of the service they receive and for authorities in terms of the long-term cost savings they can make by not having to keep and deal with thousands of paper records,” commented Phil Sewards, Business Director of Capita Contact and Document Services.

Mike Custance, Head of Information Systems Unit, Hackney Social Services, who was seconded to lead on the ESCR project at the Department of Health commented, “It is pleasing that so many local authorities have developed this far, given that the main target is October 2005. This shows how well, on limited budgets, local authorities can deliver. It is clear that having social care records available electronically would be of direct benefit to the citizen ensuring that Social Services departments can provide a consistent and high quality service where the relevant information to allow them to deal with their service users, is available more quickly and efficiently.”

Integration with health systems appears an important consideration as 86 per cent reported that their ESCR system has or would have to be linked to local healthcare records systems. Over 70 per cent also reported an expected link with other local authority systems such as education and housing.

This development in the social care arena mirrors the progress that many other organisations have made to increase their efficiency. For example, Capita recently undertook an eight-month project to increase efficiency of the Teacher Pensions scheme. This involved the scanning of 21.2 million images from files that were physically nine miles long. Previously, callers would have to wait for the file to be manually retrieved and a return call or letter to answer their query. Today, an individual’s file can be retrieved in real-time while the caller making the enquiry is on the phone.

The Capita Group Plc, 71 Victoria St, Westminster, London SW1H 0XA. Tel: 020 7799 1525; fax: 020 77991526; www.capita.co.uk

IM@T Online January 2005