Once upon a time there was a mental health centre, which had staff from the both the local PCT and the local council.

On one side of the office were PCs for health workers, and on the other were computers for council workers. Filing cabinets sat in the middle of the room, dividing the two groups of workers.

Bill Malloy, head of the strategic intelligence team at Liverpool City Council, uses this real-life example of how many councils seem reluctant to share data on computer systems.

‘A lot of authorities have a silo mentality,' he tells The MJ. ‘When I first came here, we still had a number of legacy systems.
‘We were using four different system across social care.' Liverpool City Council has now adopted Capita's integrated information and case-management system One.

‘It makes sense to have one system which shares common data,' adds Mr Malloy. ‘This is the route we have gone down. There are elements of it which enable access of all the various funding streams.

‘With information sharing, people often shake their heads and say "data protection laws", but that is totally the wrong mentality. We've come down on the positive side.'

Implementation teams have been working at Liverpool City Council to test the system, and make sure everything is working before it goes operational in November, and are training up 500 users.

It is expected to have 5,000 users once they bring in ContactPoint – the electronic directory containing records for every child in the UK – goes live. Mr Malloy says switching data to one system will free up staff on the frontline, and promote closer partnership between different agencies.

In Liverpool, there are inter-agency teams, with staff from children's services and the police, tackling issues such as truancy. It will also allow them to look at strategic data both from a city-wide perspective and at a neighbourhood level.

‘We are talking about a data set which is going to be different for every child who comes through the door. So pulling data together is certainly a challenge,' he adds.

‘But in terms of strategic planning, it's easier to see what's going on at a strategic level with all information on one database.

‘We are able to run a lot of "so what" scenarios.' Sean Massey, director at Capita Children's Services, says: ‘Three or five years ago, many authorities would be in a place where children's data was very disparate.

‘Most would have a central database. Sitting around that database would be others to manage what was being done on service provision. Some authorities had 10 databases and they were all disconnected from the social services databases.' Mr Massey adds that in recent years, new teams and demands have come up, which councils also have to deal with, like the Every child matters agenda.

‘From a pure IT spend perspective, having one system is pretty efficient,' he says. ‘But the real driver is having more efficiency for spotting when a child is in need.'

Anna Smallwood, principal consultant and children's services product manager for SOCITM Consulting, comments: ‘In a sense, there is a silo mentality, but, having said that, Every child matters is moving people towards information sharing in children's services.

‘There are clear benefits to this in terms of making information available, avoiding repetition and finding out which other agencies are involved.

But the other side of the argument is that we have to be careful about what agencies share. ‘If we are building a single database, we must be quite clear about security and access controls.'