Renfrewshire Council introduces new cloud-based case management system for social work and social care

Renfrewshire Council has introduced a new cloud-based case management system to help encourage more efficient social work and social care case management.

The local authority said the coronavirus pandemic pushed it to introduce the new system, ECLIPSE from OLM, which it says will support its digital transformation and improve social work practices to achieve better outcomes.

With the lockdown forcing the local authority to move to remote working, the system enables staff to work smarter and more flexibly, while its capability to provide richer sets of data and information should improve case load management and help the council’s response to the needs of service users.

Renfrewshire council said the system would reduce the time social workers spent on case recording, while maintaining quality records.

John Trainer, Renfrewshire Council’s chief social work officer and head of child care and criminal justice, said: “Our aim was to improve our social work practice and achieve better outcomes for the children and families in our communities.  We sought a technical solution to facilitate service redesign and support our social work staff to work smarter and more flexibly.

“Our social work staff will benefit from an integrated and accessible system which is intuitive and easy to use and reduces the administrative burden. 

“We chose ECLIPSE as it was the only proven cloud native solution on the market.  We could see the potential of ECLIPSE from day one, and the global pandemic has really highlighted this. Despite the challenges of the pandemic we were able to collaborate fully with OLM to develop the system in accordance with our needs.  The world and how we deliver services has transformed and thankfully, our case management capacity has evolved with it. We can now work from anywhere, at any time, from any device, ensuring no disruption in the event of a pandemic.”