The longest peer-review in history?

It’s 10 months since Tim Loughton, shadow children’s minister, asked when the evaluation of the Integrated Children’s System would be published, and received the reply:

“The draft of this report is currently being peer-reviewed, and it will be published once the report has been completed.”

The Integrated Children’s System (ICS) is the third ‘core’ database in the children’s trilogy: it holds a record of every child’s contact with social care services and consists of a series of online forms. Amongst other things, it has been criticised by social workers for reducing the assessment of children at risk of harm to a mechanised process, ill-suited to the reality of child protection work.

The evaluation, commissioned by the DfES, was submitted in September 2006. Since then the silence has been deafening. Could it be that the report is less than enthusiastic about ICS?