May 2012 - Kent based Independent Fostering Agency, FosterCare UK, have moved to CHARMS Online the now firmly established web based version of the fostering and adoption management system. CHARMS users can thereforerecord and update records in CHARMS wherever they are as long as they have access to a computer and the internet. Managing Director, Jonathan Toomey said 'this move will assist us to advance as abusiness, as we enter a new phase in which we must be flexible in our approach to achieve greater efficiency, supplemented by more accurate data input'.

A new era has begun. CHL is now Social Care Network Solutions Limited and our new website can be found at www.socialcarenetwork.com. You will be pleased to know that our bank account details remain exactly the same (except the name change); our main location is still the Manchester office; and all the same people that you have come to know are still here. For those that do make payments to us would you please amend your records so that all payments/correspondence is marked for Social Care Network Solutions Limited. You may be wondering why the change. We have grown as a company – we now employ 25 staff – and our focus is almost exclusively in social care. Most of our customers recognise CHARMS or ASSET and other core systems and we want to bring them all together under the Social Care Network umbrella. This will enable us to provide care organisations with computer systems to help manage all of their operations. The Social Care Network will deliver caseload management, HR, training and staff development, invoicing and payments. The Social Care Network will also manage complaints and individual outcomes for people (children or adults) to whom services are being provided. We now have more than 250 customers and we want to make sure that we can provide a one-stop-shop “network” of solutions. Whatever your system needs – including email and document management – we can take charge of them for you. To that end we have signed a contract with UKFast, an ISO 27001 accredited hosting company, to hold our customers’ data, securely and with the highest levels of data protection we can offer. I attach their brochure for information. So begins a new era in the use of online systems in the care sector. If you want to talk to me about any of this please feel free to ring me on 0161 237 1872. I would like to close by saying thank you for your support over the years – we have been working with many of our customers for over a decade – and to say I am looking forward to the next 10 years. We, and especially me, are not going anywhere. We want to support the social care community and everything we do is for that purpose. Regards Jim Moores

CHL Systems is pleased to announce that its two new members of staff, Louise Quayle and Phil Moses, started work on 2nd April 2012.
Phil is a CHARMS Trainer and Support Officer and he describes his new position as "Not only will I be at the end of the phone on the Helpdesk when people need support, but I’ll also be out training and supporting all CHARMS users across the UK, as well as using my experience of working in Children’s Services to help support developments and improvements to CHARMS".
Louise is an ASSET Trainer & Support Officer and she describes her new role as "Initially I’ll be working on updating the old ASSET User Guide and training worksheets to suit Online ASSET. Over the next few months I’ll be assisting/shadowing Mike Barlow doing onsite training and taking support calls."
CHL welcomes them both to the team and looks forward to a long and happy relationship.

We are very pleased to announce that the pilot running at Five Rivers has completed successfully.
Following a board meeting in the last week Five Rivers have taken the decision to implement CHARMS across the business to supply the organisation's solution for Adoption, Fostering and Residential Care case load management.
We would like to welcome Five Rivers into the CHL Systems customer family, and we look forward to providing them IT services for many years to come!

We are pleased to announce that Eastern Family Services have now joined us as a user of CHARMS. We visited the offices in East Bergholt, Suffolk and had an informal run through of CHARMS. That was enough - within a matter of days the decision was made and training is planned for early May 2012. We would like to thank Tony, Elle, Dee and Sarah for their hospitality and for deciding to go with CHARMS.

March 2012 - Three Circles Fostering staff have been fully trained in and are using CHARMS following the recent implementation at theiroffice in Wilmslow, Cheshire.A recent new entrant to the child care sector, Three Circles already have some approved carers and plan to useboth the Carer Log-in and Panel Memberaccounts, taking advantage of theof the flexibility andvaried levels of access to their data in CHARMS. Having got off to an encouraging start, we at Social Care Network Solutions are looking forward to a long and successful relationship with Three Circles.

We are very pleased to announce that SWIIS Fostercare(Scotland and England), one of the largest independent fostering agencies in the UK has now signed the contract for CHARMS. We have enjoyed discussions so far and we are all looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship over the coming months and years. Thank you to SWIIS for putting their faith in CHARMS.

We are pleased to announce that Computing Help Limited and CHARMS now have a presence on LinkedIn. Please have alook : CHARMS on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the biggest network of business people in the world and enables our customers to keep up-to-date with developments at CHL. We are now running monthly CHARMS refresher training courses at our training facility in Manchester. If you area new user of CHARMS, or just want to update your skills, you can now book on one of our sessions. Not only will you be trained in the key features in the latest version of CHARMS but you may also meet staff from other agencies and share ideas and skills. To book please contact CHL on 0161 237 1872 and ask for Toni.

Great news - MIND, Hull and East Yorkshire, have now signed up with ASSET. ASSET is one of the most widely used, online database systems in mental health services and recent innovations around outcome monitoring make ASSET even more of a must for any agency needing to manage client records. Beating off stiff competition from three other respected software providers ASSET will be rolled out over the coming months (February - April 2012). Thank you to all the good people in Hull for giving us the opportunity.

More great news as Synergy Fostering sign a contract with CHL for CHARMS. Our thanks to the team in Borough who have treated us so well and with whom we have established a warm relationship already. The Business Analysis has been completed and we are now putting together an implementation plan to train all staff and get all records computerised as soon as possible. Everyone at CHL is looking forward to the project.