Carepathway SILVER Final report
Introduction
The Troubled Families Programme seeks to provide effective help through joined-up local services to the estimated 400,000 families in England and Wales who experience multiple and complex need. At the heart of the programme is information sharing between services. However evaluation of the programme found a failure to share information between services was a barrier to joined-up care. We aimed to explore public and professional views about data sharing and develop a platform to facilitate data linkage between primary health care and social care ‘early help’ practitioners.
Methods
Within phase 1 of the project, we conducted 35 semi-structured interviews with parents accessing early help services, 8 focus groups with practitioners supporting vulnerable families, and 12 semi-structured interviews with young people with varying experiences of accessing services. These findings were used to inform three co-production workshops with parents, children and practitioners in phase 2, wherein the interface design requirements were examined. In phase 3, the system was demonstrated within two workshops with local authorities to gather feedback.
Results
We found that parents did not have an understanding of who had access to their information presently and for what purposes. However, they were often willing for their information to be shared in order to improve the care they received. Practitioners identified the benefit of having access to relevant health data. Moreover, there is a willingness within primary care and social care to share information to improve care for vulnerable families, providing the legal basis of consent is met.
Achievements
The project has achieved the development of the SILVER system that uses the Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) to share GP data with social care staff. This system was well-received by social care practitioners supporting vulnerable families. The project has fulfilled the governance and development requirements for information sharing to occur including producing information sharing agreements and achieving compliance with clinical risk management processes. Administrative delays have prevented data flow from occurring.