Sara Sharif's story is heartbreaking, yet it urges us to ask: What challenges must we overcome to accelerate digitised safeguarding and save more lives?
The tragic case of Sara Sharif has brought the devastating realities of child abuse and neglect into sharp focus and sadly her story is not an isolated incident. As reported by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, over 480 children were affected by serious incidents between April 1 2023 and March 31 2024. Each one of these is a vulnerable child—someone whose voice may have gone unheard until it was too late.
Child safety is central to community health teams, social services, schools and integrated care boards, yet systemic challenges persist. Early intervention is impacted by the complexity of identifying at-risk children, with limited resources, following years of cuts to funding, and increasing demands on social care services.
The upcoming Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which will be introduced into Parliament on Tuesday, and recently announced increase in the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant exceeding £500 million signals a turning point for preventing children and families from reaching crisis points. But funding alone is not enough, services must transform.
Digitise to Accelerate Help
Significant efforts are being made to modernise and digitise data collection and safeguarding processes within children's social care. When it happens, Councils report preventing tragedies. Yet today, the majority of Councils, Schools and Integrated Care Boards still run safeguarding assessments using paper forms, or systems that don’t talk to each other.
This limits joined-up visibility across organisations and takes valuable time to process.
What’s stopping us?
Let’s look at the three biggest barriers stopping local authorities in the UK from fully digitising safeguarding forms, and we ask are these barriers real? and how can they be overcome?
- Lack of Funding and Resources
Many local authorities operate under tight budgets, making it difficult to invest in modern digital systems. The upfront costs of implementing new digital tools, upgrading IT infrastructure, and training staff are often prohibitive, especially when compared with the relatively low-cost, albeit inefficient, paper systems.
Whilst off the shelf IT systems may be cost prohibitive, there are new approaches to digitisation using customisable systems that are a fraction of the cost. The in-year savings are also compelling. For example, Kent Community Health saved £93,000 each year moving from paper to digital forms. - Integration Challenges
Safeguarding involves multiple agencies, including schools, healthcare providers, and the police. Interoperability across a wide variety of software platforms, data standards, and legacy systems can be prohibitive.
Integration engines can securely integrate and share data across an unlimited number of systems and settings. Our low-code platform provides a comprehensive set of industry-standard integration methods and connectors enabling integrations with ease. The available integration methods include: HTTP, SFTP, MESH, Fax, Email, SMS, and IM1. - Staff Training and Resistance to Change
Transitioning to digital forms requires extensive training for staff who may be accustomed to paper processes.
If digital systems are built to perfectly fit each professional’s needs, standards and systems, resistance is minimised. For example, The Lancaster Model, built on the Aire Innovate platform, is centred around universal Health Needs Assessments delivering on many government drivers including The Healthy Child Programme. It can be customised to meet a team’s working practices, and so help transform and improve the day of staff, not add to them.
Example of a modernised system to support safeguarding: The Lancaster Model (TLM)
Built on the Aire Innovate platform, The Lancaster Model is proven to accelerate safeguarding help. Online forms remove processing delays and costs, evidence-based scoring and algorithms enable children at risk to be pinpointed for immediate help, and a dashboard allows data analysis across a region to spot trends and service needs.
This proactive approach ensures that alerts and actions are raised promptly, often enabling same-day interventions to support the child.
Derbyshire Healthcare recently shared their experience of digitising safeguarding processes on a School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA) webinar. Please click here to watch the recording: https://youtu.be/WFIIq2mw9cA
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