'Crude idea risks lives of children'.

A COMPUTER system supposed to help social workers protect children has been condemned by academics.

Nottingham University researchers say the Integrated Children's System (ICS) could put youngsters at greater risk.

The university said ICS relied on complex assessment forms and workers inputting large amounts of data.

It said: "The need to spend more and more time inputting data into overly complex assessment forms, and the pressure to take short cuts in order to meet inflexible deadlines, create what the researchers call 'latent conditions for error'."

The study says changes brought in by the Laming Report in 2003 after the death of Victoria Climbie, together with constraints on resources, have increased the burden on frontline workers.

In situations with high referral rates, inexperienced staff, turnover or sickness, latent conditions for error would "become increasingly dangerous".

Professor David Wastell, of Nottingham Business School, said: "ICS is a crude technological attempt to transform social work into a bureaucratic practice ...

"As far as I can see, the development of ICS has been driven from the top down, by central government, with minimal design input from the social work profession, front-line practice in particular.

"The architects of ICS seem to have been convinced that it was the correct approach and pressed ahead regardless of warning signals from pilot trials."