New Computer System Aimed at Better Services for Children Goes Live in Swansea

SWANSEA children have become the first in Wales to benefit from the PARIS new fully computerised system for assessing and meeting their needs.

A computer system known as PARIS, developed by social care software supplier In4tek Ltd, has gone live at Swansea Council to revolutionise how records on children are collected, held, used and kept safe.

The aim is to ensure vulnerable children and their families are being identified, getting targeted support when they need it, and that services are being developed to cope with current and future need.

Planning for PARIS had been underway for three years before the recent CSSIW inspection of Swansea Child and Families Services, but the system will also be instrumental in addressing needs identified during the recent inspection.

Its introduction has seen intensive system administration, data migration work and initial staff training by the PARIS and Information teams and Capgemini.

The Council announced today that the system is up and running and PARIS is now officially the single system for all service user referral, assessment and care management data.

It puts Swansea among the leading authorities in Wales to have an electronic Integrated Children's System in Wales tracking a child from the moment they come into the system as a referral to when they are finally discharged as no longer needing social services.

Swansea Council Cabinet Member for Social Services Cllr Wendy Fitzgerald said: "I am delighted to see PARIS go live. This is a major step forward in the way we identify and provide care for some of our most vulnerable children and its importance in driving the service forward cannot be under estimated.

"This technology puts Swansea ahead of the game in terms of the CSSIW requirements for all local authorities to have modern and effective data processes and management.

"In fact, PARIS will go further than the requirements of the CSSIW as it includes family support services and family support providers."

PARIS means one secure record will be entered and maintained on a vulnerable child including all information collected through contact with different areas of the service.

This information will then be available to service providers such as education and health where consent has been given to access that information to support the child and their family.

This comprehensive record will provide quality information to help a child's needs be better and more timely identified as well as met through such things as proper assessments, care plans and reviews.

It should, for example, enable more timely support to prevent family breakdown and a child going into care, or to ensure that a child who goes into care has their accommodation, emotional, physical, health and education needs met.

The system should enable provision to be better adapted as the needs of a child changes due to, for example, sudden changes in family circumstances.

PARIS will also allow better planning and development of services by more clearly and more immediately identifying needs and pressure points.

The PARIS system has been designed specifically around the needs of child and family services building on success of system which Swansea Council helped pioneer for Adult Services in 2003.

Swansea Council Head of Child and Family Services Mark Roszkowski said: "I am delighted that PARIS has now gone live as planned. The system will allow all of our client related records to be held in one place and will inform all of our decision-making so that children and their families are better assisted to get the help and support that they need when they need it."

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