This package of guidance has been developed with the Integrated Children's System (ICS) expert panel to support local authorities (LAs) in making improvements to ICS. It includes a Strategic manager’s guide, and guidance on ICS recording formats, Consolidating plans and reviews, and Using ICS to record evidence of whether a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm.
Integrated Children’s System: Strategic manager’s guide – Successfully commissioning and managing effective ICS improvement
This guide has been designed by practitioners and managers on the Expert Panel to support strategic managers in commissioning and managing the ICS improvement in their authorities.
Integrated Children’s System: Guidance note – ICS recording formats
This guidance has been produced in consultation with expert panel members to give LAs the information they need to improve the usability of ICS systems and recording formats, making them more practical for every day use and the outputs more relevant to those who use them – whether they are other professionals, families or the children themselves. This guidance is therefore primarily targeted at those who are responsible for local decision making in how the ICS is implemented.
Accompanying the ICS recording formats guidance is a deconstruction table which has been set out in two different formats – A and B. The deconstruction has been compiled following a positive response to the deconstruction of the Core Assessment (which formed part of the ICS improvement guidance published in October 2009) and requests to repeat this exercise across all ICS records. Format A follows the same structure as that issued for the Core Assessment. However, due to the size of the task involved across the ICS, Expert Panel members felt it would also be useful to set out the deconstruction in a more concise format (format B). LAs may therefore decide to follow the original format, or use the alternative layout, depending on which they feel is more accessible for their purposes.
Integrated Children’s System: Guidance note - Consolidating plans and reviews
This guidance has been produced in consultation with expert panel members to give LAs the information they need to improve the usability of ICS systems for plans and reviews, within a context of meeting legal and regulatory requirements and best practice for achieving best outcomes for children and young people.
Integrated Children’s System: Analysing and recording significant harm – Using ICS to record the evidence of whether a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm
This guide has been designed by practitioners and managers on the expert panel to support front line practitioners and managers to use the ICS to deliver services to children and their families.
