London Borough of Newham Council is to deploy an electronic case management system across its Adult Social Care and Children and Young People's services for social care professionals to save time and work more efficiently.
The council, located in an area with high levels of deprivation, is the first in the country to deploy Azeus's holistic family-focused system in an Adult Social Care department.
Newham's social workers and other social care professionals such as occupational therapists will be able to access and update data on members of a family on a single page - data which is currently viewed separately. If an incident involving a child is logged, users can select other family members and information will be automatically replicated in their case notes. Other time-saving devices include shared diaries and on-screen appointment reminders.
"With the current system there's a lot of duplicating and repeating information" said a Newham spokesperson. "The new system will drive out inefficiencies".
Around 450 staff will have access, including remote access to AzeusCare from IT services company Azeus. The software is intended to help a range of social care professionals to make better decisions, improve case monitoring and provide a more holistic view of cases.
The software is currently being configured to the needs of Newham's Adult Social Care and Children's and Young People's Services departments. A group of IT-savvy staff will then test the system. A staff training programme on the software will use a combination of e-learning and classroom-based teaching.
While Newham is at the early stages of deployment, the spokesperson said that mobile working options may be explored in future.
AzeusCare goes live at London Borough of Newham Council next year.
