Auto-Upload from EMS - 25th April 2007

The auto-upload function from EMS relies on a piece of technology called an Adaptor which extracts relevant information from the EMS database and sends it to SafetyNET. The Adaptor is owned and managed by the Capita who are the suppliers of EMS. This technology is brand new and Sheffield is one of its first implementers.

Capita have now delivered an adaptor which appears to be stable and this is currently being extensively tested prior to live roll out. We expect to go live within 3 weeks. The effect of this will be that any changes to child details which occurr in EMS will be propagated to SafetyNET instantly. SafetyNET will also start to capture and display professional involvement info from EMS.

Updates from Care First are continuing to work well. We will keep you informed of any developments.

Child Data Incorrect E-Request has been suspended - 25th April 2007

The decision has been taken to suspend the e-request for reporting data inaccuracy. There are several reasons for this:
1. SafetyNET does not own or control the data it dispalys. The proper place to correct this information is in the source system.
2. Corrections safetyNET makes using an administrative "meta-data" entry are likely to be overwriten by repeated incorrect data from the source.
3. Due to practitioners not including full information with the e-requests processing them is very time consuming and exceeds the resources we have available.
4. Although incorrect data can be fustrating for users SafetyNET is not primarily a system for recording children's data. The children's data supports SafetyNET's prime objective which is the foster effective information sharing among practitoners working with children and young people.

SafetyNET currently has 1400 activated users and 6700 children on active caselists. There are over 100,000 children and young people listed on safetyNET.

The ever increasing use of SafetyNET has inevitably led to a high volume of support calls and e-requests. The safetyNET team has only limited resources to deal with this. There are only two business support staff to support the entire integrated practise team and run a fulltime helpdesk.

SafetyNET pools information from Education, Social Care and the Health service and presents what it believes to be the best view of the childs data based on the information it receives. Obviously three different systems will not hold exactly the same data and the SafetyNET system itself has no way of knowing exactly which piece of information from which data source is actually correct. It therefore presents the most recently updated information in each case.

Fortunately, this does not in most cases prevent SafetyNET from working effectively. The crucial point is that a practitioner is able to positively identify the child they are working with (usually by name and DOB) and they can then confidently log their involvement even if the address information, for instance, is out of date.

Now for the good news:

Every effort is made to ensure that we maintain accurate information about children and young people. We are currently working to add 2 further data sources to SafetyNET which will further extend the completeness and accuraccy of the data held on the system. These are Child Health and Connexions youth service.

We are currently in the final stages of auditing our data for duplications which inevitably arise over time. With 2 weeks we estimate that 90% of duplicates will be eliminated.

After many delays, Capita (the company who supply the our Educational Management Sysytem EMS) have delivered a tool to extract EMS data and send it to SafetyNET in realtime. In other words, when a child's record is changed in EMS the change will automatically propogate to SafetyNET. This system, which we call auto-upload, is in final testing at this moment and will go live within 2 weeks.