Blackthorn ASC
Blackthorn for Advanced Social Care is a specialised and tailored version of our enterprise suite that is designed to address the problems of protecting children and vulnerable adults. Many cases in the UK and abroad have highlighted the need for improved communication and collaboration.
Central governments have prescribed a range of procedures and processes and require considerable reporting and metrics from a range of agencies and professionals engaged in the complex field of social care.
Previously, technologies have been trialled and found to be extremely wanting in terms of their usability and cost effectiveness. Many users have found these systems unusable and misaligned to their actual requirements. Whilst these systems have attempted to use technology for good reasons, their design has been incapable of truly supporting those tasked with the range of difficult and time restricted actions with which they are tasked.
Blackthorn ASC is a new approach to the use of appropriate technology in social care. It's simple and clear terminology can be tailored by the simple import of defaults and workflows. ASC templates are designed by a range of subject matter experts in the fields of child and adult care, law enforcement, medical care and government monitors. We have really tried to get into the minds of the experts in this field to base our tailoring not only in following required standards (such as the London Child Protection Procedures) but also on truly practical sets of metrics. Our design ethic has and always will be to provide Blackthorn ASC as a solution that enables information collection and reporting with minimum effort and time by users. We even support a smart way of using paper-based form completion in the field with a highly reliable way of turning data from the forms into useful input with minimum log in time required by care specialists.
Blackthorn ASC enables significantly improved communications, collaboration and confidence in the management of social care. Experts and specialists from the following areas can operate as distinct teams, just as they do operationally using their own specialist terminology and processes.
Because all teams operate in the same system with the primary focus on the agency with core social services responsibility and then supporting any organisational structure – flat and hierarchical, Blackthorn ASC is able to support each team's proactive and reactive activities with a consistent and common data set.
The core assessment process is fully supported and activities with associated process and procedures are built by default, around the specification ideals of the Integrated Children's System (ICS).
All care specialists, from adult and child support workers to paediatricians, from police officers to duty and referral team members and from Caldicott Guardians to social housing officers can be quickly and simply networked together in a central, multi-team and coherent yet adaptable system.
Risk modelling of children and adult subjects is optionally and fully supported. This unique approach enables the core assessment teams to copy a model template which is based on a generic child or adult subject and then to maintain that model with information and intelligence gathered from the field.
Blackthorn subject-based risk models enable the automatic cross correlation of data gathered from the various proactive activities (assessments, reviews etc.) and reactive activities (incidents, investigations etc.) to bias the models and to give a real-time 'as-is' view of the risk to which a subject of care is exposed as well as supporting various 'what-if' scenarios that show care specialists the results of potential changes in the care programme for any given subject. Informed decisions can then be made quickly, repeatedly and with positive assurance gathered at source in a contemporaneous record of action.
The Blackthorn ASC canvas enables a graphical representation of incidents to give managers considerable support in briefing and situational awareness of their teams.
Blackthorn ASC revolutionises the approach to the care of vulnerable adults and children by using an easy to understand point of reference; the risk subject, and allowing this point to be constantly updated through the cross-correlation of data from reactive and proactive activities. No other system does this, no other system will free critically valuable time and resources for the care and protection required in this most important field of social responsibility.
