Working together: seeing the bigger picture - Wirral Council
Located in the North West of England, the Wirral is a peninsula of 60 square miles with a population of 320,000.The Council went live with the Liquidlogic Children’s Social Care System (LCS) in 2014 and has recently subscribed to the Liquidlogic Professional Portal to ensure the maximum number of contributions from a variety of professionals involved in a case are collected. The Professional Portal enables social workers to delegate forms or parts of forms to external professionals in the normal way via the Liquidlogic system, and receive responses via a secure web page directly into the Liquidlogic social care system. By using the Professional Portal, Councils need not train professionals or invest in additional licences for the social care system.
Professional Portal in Wirral
Wirral Council is looking to achieve a number of objectives by rolling out the Liquidlogic Professional Portal, not least maximising valuable input from external professionals in a timely and efficient manner.
Mark Ellis, Information, Systems & School Projects Manager at Wirral Council comments: “Like many Councils, we often seek input from external professionals by issuing paper forms for them to complete and return. There are countless problems in doing this including illegible handwriting and forms getting lost or delayed. With the Liquidlogic Professional Portal, we are able to set timescales for form completion, issue electronic reminders, and most importantly the contributions from external professionals form part of the child’s case notes and can be reported on, unlike a third party form which is attached to the case note and can often be missed and doesn’t form part of social work reporting. Essentially all the information is held in one place and supports our vision of joined up working.”
The Council plans to extend the Professional Portal to 100 local schools requesting their input to Personal Education Plans (PEP). Training will be given to contributors, however this will be based on a shared understanding of expectations as opposed to system training.
The benefits
- Reduces time searching for documents and their contents
- Ensures that all information relevant to a case is held in one place and obtained securely
- All input from external professionals is included in a case and is reportable
- Information is legible and received on time
- Promotes joined up working
- Provides accurate case information for those who are not familiar with a case
- Lower costs, reduces the need for additional licences and training for external professionals
Part of my remit is to ensure that the Looked after Education Service Team understands what is expected of them in terms of timescales for input and how the system will work. The Professional Portal will sit across both our Liquidlogic Children’s Social Care System (LCS) and our Liquidlogic Early Help Module (EHM) to maximise the opportunities for secure, collaborative working.
Mark Ellis, Information, Systems & School Projects Manager, Wirral Council
The next steps
Wirral Council also plans to introduce the Professional Portal to health partners and the third sector including local charities.
For further details about the Liquidlogic Professional Portal, email marketing@liquidlogic.co.uk
