Liquidlogic, a McKesson company, has announced new functionality to customers with a requirement for recording allegations of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE)

The functionality, available as a Workspace within the Liquidlogic Children's Social Care System, enables workers to identify risk factors and trends relating to a child or young person.  The Liquidlogic CSE Workspace has recently been deployed by Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council.

Speaking about the decision, Scott Moseley, Information Systems Programme Manager (People), Rochdale MBC, says "the key to identifying trends lies in information gathering to build a story of the child. As soon as the information is entered into the Workspace it is shared securely with relevant members of staff and areas of concern are monitored by our robust processes.  Not only does the system allow a variety of agencies to securely record allegations, it also identifies and suggests others who are linked to the perpetrator along with other relevant information."

The system highlights risk factors pre-defined by the Council, such as drug and alcohol abuse in parents or carers of the child, increased school absences, and 'Looked after Child' status. The Workspace is used at Rochdale by local multi- agency team Sunrise, which includes social workers, police detectives, family support workers and youth workers. The Council has implemented a 'RAG ratings' tool, which uses a risk factor score calculator, labelled Red, Amber and Green (RAG), dependent on the severity of risks to the child.  This helps the assessor to identify vulnerable children who are at risk from Sexual Exploitation.

Jim Sullivan, Sales Director at Liquidlogic comments, "CSE is, sadly, something which many Local Authorities have to deal with.  Rochdale has taken a proactive approach and by using Liquidlogic's CSE Workspace, the Council is able to piece together key factors to try and identify children who are most at risk.  This enables Rochdale to take preventative steps to protect vulnerable children. The additional advantage here is that the Workspace is part of Rochdale's case management system, rather than a standalone system. This means that information is only ever entered once by staff and therefore saves valuable practitioner time."

Liquidlogic's CSE Workspace is available now to existing customers.