We are very pleased to announce that the pilot running at Five Rivers has completed successfully.
Following a board meeting in the last week Five Rivers have taken the decision to implement CHARMS across the business to supply the organisation's solution for Adoption, Fostering and Residential Care case load management.
We would like to welcome Five Rivers into the CHL Systems customer family, and we look forward to providing them IT services for many years to come!

31/03/2012

We are pleased to announce that Eastern Family Services have now joined us as a user of CHARMS. We visited the offices in East Bergholt, Suffolk and had an informal run through of CHARMS. That was enough - within a matter of days the decision was made and training is planned for early May 2012. We would like to thank Tony, Elle, Dee and Sarah for their hospitality and for deciding to go with CHARMS.

13/03/2012

March 2012 - Three Circles Fostering staff have been fully trained in and are using CHARMS following the recent implementation at theiroffice in Wilmslow, Cheshire.A recent new entrant to the child care sector, Three Circles already have some approved carers and plan to useboth the Carer Log-in and Panel Memberaccounts, taking advantage of theof the flexibility andvaried levels of access to their data in CHARMS. Having got off to an encouraging start, we at Social Care Network Solutions are looking forward to a long and successful relationship with Three Circles.

01/03/2012

We are very pleased to announce that SWIIS Fostercare(Scotland and England), one of the largest independent fostering agencies in the UK has now signed the contract for CHARMS. We have enjoyed discussions so far and we are all looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship over the coming months and years. Thank you to SWIIS for putting their faith in CHARMS.

09/02/2012

We are pleased to announce that Computing Help Limited and CHARMS now have a presence on LinkedIn. Please have alook : CHARMS on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the biggest network of business people in the world and enables our customers to keep up-to-date with developments at CHL. We are now running monthly CHARMS refresher training courses at our training facility in Manchester. If you area new user of CHARMS, or just want to update your skills, you can now book on one of our sessions. Not only will you be trained in the key features in the latest version of CHARMS but you may also meet staff from other agencies and share ideas and skills. To book please contact CHL on 0161 237 1872 and ask for Toni.

04/02/2012

Great news - MIND, Hull and East Yorkshire, have now signed up with ASSET. ASSET is one of the most widely used, online database systems in mental health services and recent innovations around outcome monitoring make ASSET even more of a must for any agency needing to manage client records. Beating off stiff competition from three other respected software providers ASSET will be rolled out over the coming months (February - April 2012). Thank you to all the good people in Hull for giving us the opportunity.

31/01/2012

More great news as Synergy Fostering sign a contract with CHL for CHARMS. Our thanks to the team in Borough who have treated us so well and with whom we have established a warm relationship already. The Business Analysis has been completed and we are now putting together an implementation plan to train all staff and get all records computerised as soon as possible. Everyone at CHL is looking forward to the project.

30/01/2012

JAN 2012 - WHAT NOW, AFTER ICS? CHARMS LEADS THE WAY. Many local authorities have gone back to the drawing board given the failure of ICS to deliver the child protection, operational and efficiency savings it once promised. CHARMS holds the key to one single, operational system to manage children, carer and establishment caseload and to deliver instant access for all stakeholders in childrens care. For more than 10 years CHARMS has delivered on every aspect of day-to-day management of case records in the independent sector. As at January 2012, for example, more than 70 independent fostering and adoption agencies use CHARMS and more than 8,000 (of the 13,000 foster carers looked after by the independent sector) are now in CHARMS. A number of local authorities have been using CHARMS to manage their adoption and fostering services records – Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry, Islington and many others. CHARMS has been re-designed, over the last five years, to deliver a fully integrated, single resource for all of children’s services. Unlike ICS, CHARMS manages all children’s records, in every respect, AND manages all aspects of carer recruitment, training and approval. Every placement (foster care, adoption or residential) is managed and may be reported upon. CHARMS is a complete, paperless solution. But it is NOT the place of computer systems to dictate to professionals; to constrain them; to force them in to pointless form filling. Rather, CHARMS assists those professionals and takes away the onerous burden of paperwork and management information reporting. Running records, children’s daily logs/diaries; reviews; monthly supervisions and every other “event” are recorded directly in to CHARMS using the fully online screens. & Carers can logon to record the children’s daily logs and look at their own training records, & Form F (PAR) assessors can log all of the required information/checks directly in to CHARMS, & Panel members may logon to view the “paperwork” in advance of and at panel, & Young people in care can access their own areas, online, to record/update personal diaries, answer questionnaires, or find the telephone number of their own social worker, & Social workers can enter running records quickly and easily and look at the stat checks screen to make sure everything is on track, & Out of hours/duty staff can log “events” as they happen, & And admin staff can record CRBs, Medicals, LAC paperwork and see reminders whenever they need to. & Managers may view, whenever they need to, statistics or do an electronic file audit, & Returns for regulatory bodies may be generated on the click of a button. The Ofsted Dataset is produced in less than 20 seconds… Eileen Munro said : “Recording is a key social work task and its centrality to the protection of children cannot be over-estimated. Getting effective recording systems in place to support practice is critical.” A recent Ofsted report of an independent fostering agency (October 2010 – Fostering Outcomes) using CHARMS said: "The agency is run by a competent staff team who are clear about their roles. Excellent systems exist for monitoring all aspects of the agency's functions and this goes some way to ensuringthat the well-being of young people is fully promoted and protected.
The overall quality rating is outstanding." and … "The agency takes its responsibility for ensuring that young people live in a safe home seriously. Regular health and safety checks occur in carers homes, which carers report are thorough. The agency has robust systems for ensuring that annual checks are not missed. The matching process is excellent and carers report that this works well. Matching is aided by an electronic system, close relationships with foster carers and regular practice discussions. One foster care said 'I was given full details of the child before they came'. Another said 'We had an emergency placement and every attempt possible was made to give us information about the young person. A young person said 'I am happy where I am placed'." and … "Monitoring is done through electronic systems that allow management to monitor most aspects of the service, from ensuring that all young people are registered with a dentist, to making sure that supervising social workers receive regular supervision ." And in respect of another CHARMS user Ofsted said (Fostering Solutions, Nov 2010) : "The agency is well managed. It has very effective systems in place to direct, manage and monitor its practice. The effectiveness of these management systems contribute significantly to the overall judgement of outstanding as they provide a robust foundation to the agency’s strong practice ." "Administrative records held are similarly very well kept. The records of foster carers are fully maintained, of good quality with key information being readily accessible. The agency makes very effective use of its computerised records system which allows robust monitoring by management and aids quality assurance." To quote Eileen Munro once more : " the analysis of requirements for ICT-based systems for child and family social work should primarily be based on a human-centred analysis of what is required by frontline workers; any clashes between the functional >requirements that have been identified by this process and those associated with management information reporting should normally be resolved in terms of the former" It is very interesting that CHARMS is designed quite specifically as an operational system whose single premise is to save frontline workers time - to allow for the care of children AND the support of carers. A natural conclusion of that approach is that the data is good and therefore management reports are accurate, always. The abstract from the study “When policy o’erleaps itself: the ‘tragic tale’ of the Integrated Children’s System.” White, Sue et al, August 2010, tells us : “Information technology plays a pivotal role in New Labour’s modernisation programme. The findings from a 2 year ethnographic study of the impact and origin of the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), which has been deployed in statutory children’s social care, are reported. The article explains how the ICS, by attempting to micro-manage work through a rigid performance management regime, and a centrally prescribed practice model, has disrupted the professional task, engendering a range of unsafe practices and provoking a gathering storm of user resistance. These paradoxical outcomes are attributed to inherent flaws in the design of ICS, which derive from the history of its development and its embodiment of an audit-driven, inspectorial ideology. The article concludes with some suggestions for user-centred design and policymaking, which have relevance not only for children’s social care but for the public services in general.” A study published in April 2009 : “An Exemplary Scheme? An Evaluation of the Integrated Children’s System” (Ian Shaw, Margaret Bell, Ian Sinclair, Patricia Sloper, Wendy Mitchell, Paul Dyson, Jasmine Clayden, and Jackie Rafferty) said of focus groups : “They found the exemplars prescriptive, repetitive and bitty, dividing the information into ‘chunks’ so that the story was difficult to follow. They said the tick boxes (e.g. ‘client has mental health problems’) were often irrelevant and too imprecise to be useful. The forms were too complex to share with families and children or other professionals, and not user-friendly.” CHARMS was developed for the users, by the users. In close consultation with a number of agencies – statutory and independent – the CHARMS screens were devised to enable easy access and to save operational staff time in managing “paperwork”. Even to the extent of enabling social workers to enter running records with just two clicks of the mouse once the carer or child record has been located. CHARMS also holds the entire chronology of a carer or a child in one “Progress” screen. Alongside carers’ most recent CRB check or annual review the worker may see the most recent telephone conversation with a carer or with a GP… Everything is in context and the most recent “event” is always at the top of the screen. CHARMS customers will happily testify to its effectiveness and useability. If you would like more information or a free, informal demonstration of the power of CHARMS please ring 0161 237 1872 and ask for Jim Moores or email info@chl-systems.co.uk.

01/01/2012

Great news : Rik and Jim spent the week of 12 December 2012 atTeam Fostering in Sheffield and North Shields training staff in CHARMS. It was a very enjoyable week and Team Fostering, with CHL's help, are getting the carer and childrens' records up-to-date ready for go live in January. Thank you to all the staff at Team Fostering for their enthusiasm and energy.

12/12/2011

We are delighted to announce that Sunbeam Fostering, based in Middlesex, have chosen CHARMS Online to assist them with the management of their referrals, enquiries and placements. Sunbeam Fostering will soon be able to enjoy thebenefit of a bespoke system, developed over several years, that will streamline their administration processes and facilitate compliance with statutory requirements. We have completedbusiness analysis and we are very much looking forward to working with the staff at Sunbeam Fostering.

09/12/2011