Options from IT for social care

There is more than a little enthusiasm in Jennifer Bernard's voice as the social care champion talks about Get Connected, the ICT programme that she is managing for the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). "We are very excited about it," she says. Her career has included directing services for children and young people with the NSPCC and board membership of the Child Poverty Action Group, WRVS and the Social Care Association; but in her role at SCIE she champions new technologies to improve life for people in residential care. Get Connected began just under two years ago as a support programme to give adult social services in England better access to ICT. Small care providers, including residential care homes, domiciliary care agencies and voluntary groups can apply for grants for computer equipment to benefit care service users and staff. "A lot of care providers, as we know, whether they are private or voluntary, or not for profit, or any other combination of those, are very very behind in their use of IT," she says. "What was felt to be most important was that we gave a bit of a kick-start to getting people to take onboard the information revolution." A Mori poll commissioned by SCIE revealed that, although the use of IT in social care has increased, it is mainly used for administration. And if a care service has a computer, typically residents are not permitted to use it. "I will give you a really good example of the problem we are trying to resolve," Bernard says. "One of our partners' mother in law had to go into a nursing home because she was physically very frail. But mentally she was very alert and she had been used to using email before she went in. And the nursing home she is in had a computer locked in an office, so she has absolutely no access. They have to print her emails out and take them in." So far SCIE has awarded about £6m in a series of Get Connected grants from the Department of Health, and has about another £6m still to distribute. The first tranche of about 600 organisations received money this summer, ranging from £2,000 up to £20,000, but usually in the region of £10,000. SCIE has divided the funding into four "cycles", so that organisations that may not have been aware of the scheme early on will not be disadvantaged. Asked whether it was appropriate that profit-making concerns should receive public money in this way, Bernard argues that the programme is not about administration, but access for people who use a service and training for people who work in it. In delivering Get Connected SCIE works with the Charity Technology Trust, which helps to screen the initial applications and determine eligibility, and the London Advice Services Alliance, which assesses whether the suggested technology will provide value for money and is sustainable. It does not work directly with technology suppliers, as Bernard explains: "We are completely neutral of all IT providers because we would not want to look as though we were endorsing or not endorsing a particular product." It's a little too early to make judgements about the progress of projects currently being funded, Bernard says. "We have not yet harassed or chased or taken any active interest in any of them because we thought we'd respect the four month time scale that we have given people to spend their first cycle of grant." Funding for equipment, installation and support is available for the first year, but Bernard is keen to ensure the projects continue and says that SCIE is currently looking at how it can be done. She hopes that publicity about the most successful projects will help other organisations that were not successful with their funding bids to "get the idea that this has got to be done". In her view, Get Connecting also fits in with the coalition government's notion of a Big Society. "I hate the word 'empowerment' – but it is really about putting people in a better place relative to the information revolution," she maintains. Concurrent with her SCIE work, Bernard is on the board of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), whose remit includes providing information and advice to children and their families and safeguarding the welfare of children. Her work here has made her concerned about the recent scrapping of the ContactPoint children's database. She says that when it comes to sharing information, what matters is that those entrusted with the safety and welfare of children remember the importance of sharing. "What that database would have helped with is making that information commonly available to those who needed to use it," she says. "In its absence, professionals are going to have to keep being vigilant - especially as there are now separate systems - about information clarity and information access, because time and time again things have gone wrong because knowledge was not shared, risk could not assessed, risk was not passed on." She hopes that the national roll out of the electronic version of the Common Assessment Framework, a standardised approach to assessing children's 'additional needs' and deciding how they should be met, will not simply replicate paper processes. "The electronic system should be able to sort out some of the problems with the current system, like having to repeat data and so on," she says. "Certainly on my last visit to some Cafcass offices – and this is not about Cafcass it's about the whole system - the volume of paper that we all send each other is horrendous. The reasons for sticking with paper are sometimes to do with the lack of a secure data network, she says, and her hope is that the reform of the court service should improve the situation. "The only reason for sharing information is in the interests of the data subject," she argues. "And so long as you are clear as you can be all the way through about that, in my experience there isn't a problem. What sometimes inhibits people wanting to share data is poor quality." GP practices, in her view, are poor at information sharing and she has concerns from this point of view about the planned structural changes to NHS primary care. "The general practice bit of the NHS, splendid though it is, and has never been the best at sharing," she says. "And I think those practices that aren't yet terribly electronically savvy, or are small, or not yet integrated, or may serve a very shifting population, they are going to struggle in some cases to join in. They may not see the point of joining in information sharing, and that could be extremely risky." On innovations in telehealth and telecare, Bernard acknowledges their value but believes they will never replace personal care because they can never be hands on. "What telecare can do is to give extra help and assistance. It can monitor whether you can moving about or not and offer a less intrusive way of keeping an eye on you, if you are willing. "I would be absolutely delighted if I could log on at home or the office and talk to my GP, instead of having to trail off to the surgery, for example. And people with hearing impairments find it really helpful to communicate if webcams are installed." Going forward, the Get Connected programme could be expanded to cover technologies to support personalised care for people who self-fund or purchase part of their care. Bernard says that SCIE is waiting for government policy on this area to emerge and for an improvement in the information available to people. "It could be information about what's out there, what it costs, but it could also be sharing information about your budget and what you want and seeing if a provider could meet you half way with it, which I think is quite interesting." She believes that the choices that people make about care tend to be fairly traditional because of limited knowledge about what is available. " And that's where IT can help. It still can't help you make decisions, but it can still give you some options."