Mobility in Children’s Services – Nomad Makes the Case

With the recent changes around Every Child Matters and the moves to implement integrated children’s systems the need to enable social workers operating across these areas with the right technology for the job is essential. Frontline managers and practitioners will need to ensure that critical information is available where the service is delivered in the community. Experience elsewhere has confirmed that mobile solutions can be designed and delivered which provide an integrated approach to information for social workers.  

There has never been a better time for mobilising children’s social workers with modern ICT solutions working in the community. Over the last few years Nomad has seen significant maturity of devices and solutions across the government sector but more recently in children’s services we have seen deployments to improve communications, make better use of staff time and provide access to children’s data. The recent mobile technology capital grant to local authorities is recognition by the DCSF of the importance of addressing this area. Our current state of the nation survey has demonstrated that this area is now moving ahead more rapidly with a number of authorities piloting the use of mobile devices with children’s service staff..
 
Social workers operating out of the office need to stay in touch. There are a range of options being trialled by local authorities but Nomad is convinced that the approach should start simple and then build on success as staff become more confident working with the technology.
 
Our research and feedback from local authorities confirms that by providing simple diary, email and mobile phone capability children’s staff can become more productive without the risk of overly complex solutions. Even providing simple view only access to children’s data can be achieved without too much difficulty. The business case is strong where the most appropriate solutions are selected and authorities don’t try to be too ambitious at first. Other more complex solutions can come later.
 
Nomad is supportive of initiatives which seek to maximise the benefits of the technology, but support the children’s staff in areas which are closely relevant to the day to day role. Nomad will be developing this theme strongly in future articles and at our planned regional event programme. We see this agenda as crucial and will be running detailed workshops covering a range of areas including first hand experience of children’s staff and business case development.