A key strength of the Access to Resources and Placements Finance (ARPF) System is that it can be easily adapted to meet the particular needs of any LA with a Social Services Department.

Aim: To provide Social and Community Care Workers with a simple automated system to track family resources, placements and costs.

Design: OCC's developers worked closely with client teams at various London authorities to design databases with friendly data input screens. Familiar Windows icons on toolbars and forms which use a series of tabbed menus generate different pages. Drop down menus and radio buttons provide quick and easy ways of finding details.

Security: Confidentiality is essential to a system involving social and community care clients; the system is designed to provide a multi-layered access using login IDs and passwords. Standard login IDs differentiate those with administrator's privileges.

Outcome: Several London authorities are using the ARPF system, including Westminster City Council, one of the outstanding authorities that has made significant progress in implementing management action plans to improve child and family services in accordance with Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) guidelines.

System Processes: The ARPF system has three main sections:

1. The ART components which consist of four groups of information linked from buttons on the main screen. Searching is fast and easy, using an innovative search engine to locate any element within the database. The screens capture clients’ legal and personal details, case notes, events (emergency or planned), resources (suggested and actual) and the client’s current location.
2. Private and voluntary (P&V) resources include details of units, placements, costs, referral notes, concerns, inspections and approvals with a link to relevant reports.
3. Reports and system maintenance menus display buttons that link to a wide range of ART and P&V reports; a maintenance menu enables an administrator to change the format, coding, etc, used on the menus. Hovering over buttons produces tooltips, the information it links to and its location.

The system provides social and community service teams with a secure, easy-to-use automated system for tracking people, resources and financial costs associated with family placements. It is designed to integrate easily with existing architectures and provide a security-controlled, multi-user access over a network.

Benefits include

• reduced effort to view and manipulate large volumes of information associated with placement of clients and relatives
• easy report generation
• a central focus for physically dispersed groups and agencies.

Find out more about OCC local government products at our dedicated website