Developing an Electronic Social Care Record: a tale from the Tyne

This paper reports on the development process of an Electronic Social Care Record (ESCR), which used an adapted approach to Participatory Design (PD). PD is an established range of methodologies and principles for involving users in the design and implementation of systems or products. University researchers worked as part of a wider team including corporate social service stakeholders, a multidisciplinary children's social service team, and a technology provider, to develop a system that supports the integration of information of various teams/disciplines which need to work together to intervene with children who are in need. Using action research and ethnographic techniques, the researchers sought to understand and address the challenges faced by the various stakeholders when designing a system to deliver an ESCR.