Following a directive from the Department for Education, Worcestershire County Council moved to an alternative delivery model in 2017. Children, their families and carers are now provided with services across social care, early help and education exclusively by an organisation called Worcestershire Children First. The company is 100% owned by Worcestershire County Council and delivers its children’s services on behalf of the local authority working with partners across the county to ensure children, young people and families receive the best possible service.

After successfully implementing the Liquidlogic Adults’ Social Care system (LAS) in 2019, Worcestershire County Council is now also live with the Children’s and Early Help system. The platform is hosted by Liquidlogic for over 800 users and replaces Frameworki from Servelec. The council uses the Signs of Safety social work model and has implemented relevant forms into the system to support practitioners.

Speaking about the go-live, Andrew Spice, Strategic Director of Commercial and Change commented:

Our plan was to take the Liquidlogic Adults’ Social Care system live first and we have seen a very positive reaction from users across that service. We were confident that our children’s social care teams would respond in the same way and although it is early days, feedback is good so far.

We were initially drawn to the fresh user interface and unique functionality such as Atom to support staff in joining the dots between children and their family networks. The fact that Liquidlogic supports our approach to social work practice at Worcestershire, including Signs of Safety and the Three Conversations model, reinforced that it was a good fit for us.

Software that can make intelligent suggestions of linkages between people, as well as family working will, in turn, support sound social work decisions. Working on one case management platform across both children’s and adults’ social care will bring benefits including enhanced information sharing and time saving.

David Grigsby, Managing Director, Liquidlogic commented:

Customer feedback suggests that councils using Liquidlogic across adults and children’s services achieve a reduction in recording time and greater information sharing. This is not only across social care, but given our history of health integration, multi-agency working is also enhanced. We welcome Worcestershire to the Liquidlogic customer group.