Bolton Strengthens Education Support for Looked After Children with New Portal.

Bolton Council has gone live with a new delegation portal from Liquidlogic to better manage Personal Education Plans (PEPs) for looked after children in its care. In addition, a new PEP process and form template has been advised in consultation with head teachers and social workers.  

Over the last three terms, 273 members of staff have used the system to complete 479 children’s PEPs across 192 schools, both in and out of borough.

The Virtual School team can now electronically delegate forms directly to teachers of looked after children using the system.  Teachers receive an email notification and log in to the portal to complete their section of the PEP, submit it and download a copy for their local records.  The information provided is then automatically entered into each child’s record held on the local authority’s Liquidlogic Children’s Social Care system.

Bolton’s Virtual School Head, Lindsay Nelson, said: “We’ve been impressed with how schools have welcomed the new approach and have a real appetite to take ownership of the contributions.  In the first term of the rollout there was 56% uptake in using the delegation portal, which has now increased to 96%.  

"It's been a massive collaborative effort between Bolton and Liquidlogic to roll out the system at pace.  I’m delighted we are in a stronger position with PEP contributions, and we can design our own forms that are specific to the region and more fit for purpose.  With the successful pilot under our belt, we have rolled out the portal to all schools including early years and post 16.”

The new approach is helping streamline processes and ensure all relevant information to a case is held in one secure place. Contributions were previously gathered verbally and input manually by the social worker after meetings.  Using the portal means information is more accurate and frees up valuable time for social workers.      

“From my point of view, the standout benefits are the increased governance and security,” explained Bolton Council’s Information Systems Manager, Gillian Fulop. “The portal includes an audit of contributors to the PEP, which enables the Virtual School Team to easily see who has been delegated a PEP, by who and when, and also when the PEP has been completed.  This in turn has allowed us to create reports for monitoring and managing the completion of outstanding tasks by schools.”

The council chose to use the intuitive portal as it works well to encourage infrequent external professionals to use its social care system without incurring associated overheads for additional user licences and specialist training. 

David Grigsby, Liquidlogic Managing Director added: “It’s great to see Bolton having success with its portal and adopting a more joined-up workflow for Personal Education Plans to support looked after children.”