News item

New System to Support Needs of Disabled Children at Kingston

LEEDS, 18th January 2010 – Liquidlogic, a leading provider of collaborative software to the public sector, today announced that The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames is the first Local Authority to have signed up for the PROTOCOL Integrated Disabled Children’s System (IDCS). The development has been joint funded by Partners within the Kingston Children and Young Peoples Trust

Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL IDCS is aimed at Local Authorities that have set up an integrated team to better manage the needs of disabled children. Bringing together services that were traditionally delivered by either the Local Authority or health organisations under the umbrella of a single integrated team, means that professionals can work more closely to better help disabled children and their families.

Duncan Clark, Director of Children’s Services at Kingston, comments: “whilst the Integrated Children’s System (ICS) as designed by the DCSF was originally intended to manage the needs of disabled children, it became apparent to us that we needed something more to manage the needs of this specialised cohort of children. We believe that PROTOCOL IDCS will improve the coordination of services to this group.”

Using PROTOCOL IDCS, specialists such as speech therapists, occupational therapists, paediatricians, physiotherapists and social workers can have referrals made to them which they can choose to accept, reject or refer on.

The system has been designed with time saving features such as a shared appointments calendar which will allow practitioners to see other appointments for a child. This means that they can co-ordinate appointment times enabling a parent to combine various appointments on one day rather than having to make several journeys at different times.

Speaking about the new system Denise Harrison, Sales & Marketing Director at Liquidlogic said: “Kingston has taken this innovative approach to co-ordinate support for disabled children that will save time for everyone involved in their care. IDCS will not operate in isolation - in many instances children fall into other areas of care such as eCAF and ICS and therefore integration between systems is key.”

18/01/10