Hospital Child Protection Liaison Team – Data Management Dashboard Project : The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane

Ms Emma Rawlings1, Ms Rachael McCall1

1The Prince Charles Hospital _ MNHHS, Chermside, Brisbane, Australia

The Prince Charles Hospital Child Protection Unit was awarded innovation funding in 2020-21 to facilitate the construction and trial of the first of its kind sustainable digital child protection data management system and dashboard. It aims to manage, record and report on activity performed by hospital-based Child Protection Units, including (but not limited to) volume, duration, effort and trends.

This IT solution has provided tangible outcomes for patient care inclusive of ensuring an integrated IT model of care that provides the right care at the right time for vulnerable consumers, also ensuring an ability to note trends, previous interventions and opportunities to improve patient health care for potentially at risk and vulnerable children and families within MNHHS (Metro-North Hospital and Health Service, QLD).

An additional and unexpected benefit of such a system is the dramatic reduction in the administrative processes and tasks required to be performed by Child Protection Units, leading to increased capacity for service delivery.

The goal of establishing such a system is the creation of a dashboard that provides MNHHS hospital-based Child Protection Units with a standardised, sustainable and agile data collection system that will in turn, improve data insights across MNHHS in line with National Reforms

To date, in collaboration with MNIT (Metro-North IT Services), the Dashboard has been constructed and is currently in trial phase within both the TPCH Child Protection Unit and the three other hospital-based Child Protection Units across MNHHS, with the aim of extending the trial to other Qld Health Child Protection units in the future to allow rigorous testing of its functionality


Biography:

Emma Rawlings is a highly experienced social worker and leader in health who holds a Bachelor (UQ) & Masters of Social Work (University of Sydney). Emma has a high level of clinical experience and knowledge as well as management experiences across a number of clinical areas in both the community and health care sector, including the fields of domestic and family violence, paediatrics and juvenile justice. Emma has provided clinical social work services in a range of clinical areas and over the past 2 years has been the clinical lead of the paediatrics, emergency and child protection teams at The Prince Charles Hospital. Emma manages the Domestic and Family Violence Social Work portfolio at TPCH and is responsible for the provision of both the ‘Clinical Response to Domestic and Family Violence’ training to Metro North Outer staff and expert consultation services to all TPCH staff regarding Domestic and Family Violence presentations and provision of appropriate clinical responses.

 

Ms Rawlings has led a number of research projects including a state-wide review of social work responses to Domestic and Family Violence presentations within Qld Health and an investigation of current workforce development needs of MNHHS Paediatric Allied Health Clinicians and the development of both a service model and an options paper exploring further service development initiatives and collaborations

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