Early warning system to help protect children

Leeds-based Liquidlogic aims to stop child abuse by improving communication between care workers.

After a summer of riots, it believes it can also help social services to intervene at an early stage before troubled families go “nuclear”.

Liquidlogic’s software provides an early warning system which already helps to protect around 100,000 vulnerable children.

Thanks to Liquidlogic, an alert can be triggered by a messaging system if two people raise concerns about a child in the space of a week.

As a result, steps can be taken by social services to take the child into care and ensure they are kept out of harm’s way.

Liquidlogic’s turnover has grown as demand grows for a system which aims to prevent scandals like the death of Baby Peter. Baby Peter was 17 months old when he died in Haringey, north London, at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger in August 2007.

Liquidlogic, which is owned by US-based healthcare services firm McKesson, expects to see its turnover rise from around £7m to £10m between now and 2014.

It has secured more than 25 per cent of the UK children’s services market since its formation 11 years ago. It’s now gearing up for rapid expansion in the adult services market.

David Grigsby, Liquidlogic’s director of sales and strategy, said: “The agenda in adult social care has changed completely.

“It’s moving towards one where you put control in the hands of the citizen and they work with councils and social services to manage their own care, which means there’s a whole new IT requirement.

“That’s a new dynamic, which we’ve spotted early and come up with solutions to fit it.”

Mr Grigsby said Liquidlogic was trying to provide software that enable people to work with local authorities to choose how they are supported, and who supports them.

He added: “You interact with your bank account, and the same can happen with your social care account.

“It’s never straightforward because there are data protection considerations to take into account. It’s often sensitive information.

“But that’s what Liquidlogic has always been good at. It’s what the company was set up to manage. We join up data from across a number of agencies and a number of sources.”

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke recently said that the riots which affected a number of cities this summer were the result of a penal system that fails to stop “a feral underclass” from re-offending.

Around 75 per cent of people arrested in connection with the riots had criminal records.

In the aftermath of the riots, there has been a lot of attention on the need to provide support for troubled families.

Mr Grigsby said: “One of the issues that authorities face is that you can get families who are very resource intensive.

“That’s one of the things we’ve been looking at.

“It’s all about how authorities deal with these complex situations where families are drawing on a number of services, and how those services can operate together to address their issues.

“There are some families where there is no intervention until things get critical and it lands on social services doorstep, or perhaps with the police.

“One thing we and our customers are keen on is early intervention; to get in early and provide support services before things go ‘nuclear’, as it were, and you’ve got a different type of problem that often costs a lot more money to deal with.

“One of the things we are looking at with our parent company is the way in which information on health systems can be proactively used to help social services.

“A good example would be if a child known to social services is sent to A&E.

“There are ways in which we can immediately send a text alerting the social worker about this fact.

“You are not looking at data to see what happened, you are using data in real time to tell you that something has changed and you need to intervene.”

The path of Liquidlogic

Liquidlogic, which has 77 staff at its head office in Leeds, was co-founded by entrepreneurs Denise Harrison and Ted Brierley in 2000.

They had previously run another software company, Image Systems Europe, which was sold for £4m.

Part of the proceeds were used to create Liquid- logic.

The company turned over £6.5m in 2009 and £7.4m in 2010, which includes 14 months trading due to a change in ownership.

Liquidlogic was acquired by System C in July 2009.

System C was then acquired by US-based firm McKesson in May 2011 for an undisclosed sum.

McKesson has been operating since 1833 and is the oldest and largest healthcare services company in the US.