The province's new computerized system for keeping track of children and their families could put vulnerable minors under the government's care in harm's way, says the province's children and youth watchdog.

Representative for Children and Youth Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has voiced concerns about the new tracking system since it was implemented in April this year.

The Integrated Case Management System (ICM), developed in 2008, was intended to simplify administrative work for childcare workers so they could spend less time entering data and searching for documents and more time working directly with clients.

But far from streamlining, the computer system trips up staff, leading some working on child protection cases to make decisions without full knowledge of their wards' -- and their families' -- prior histories, said Turpel-Lafond in an "emergency" statement today.

Childcare workers report that a host of problems, like trouble with printing documents, double entries for clients, missing information, and cumbersome records entry and search functions make it difficult for them to quickly and effectively assess cases, she said.

She added that vital information, like a health and safety alert on a child, can easily get missed the way the system is currently designed.

"While I appreciate that the current minister and deputy minister at Ministry of Children and Family Development inherited a poorly planned process, this does not excuse me from my public duty as an overseer of the child welfare system to provide a public warning to the government that the system does not work," said Turpel-Lafond.

The system confuses social workers in a number of ways, she said.

"Given that the application as introduced is deeply flawed for child protection work, the fix is clearly not simply a matter of more training. A system that cannot generate a paper report, for example for court purposes, or which limits the ability of staff to connect adults to children, track and understand the 'story' of what is happening in their lives, is not adequate," she said.

"My office has been inundated with calls and emails from child welfare workers and others using ICM."

The Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) was quick to respond.

The government was caught by surprise by the "magnitude" of the problems after the ICM was introduced, but has started working closely with the Representative's office and staff over the last three weeks to fix the issues, read an email statement provided by a ministry spokesperson.

"Our top priority is ensuring that no child is at risk and that is why we are taking a number of immediate steps to ensure the safety of children is not compromised in any way," it read.

Those steps include $12 million in new funding and 150 new "auxiliary" staff to help fix the system and deal with the backlog of casework and administrative tasks introducing the ICM has caused.

Adam Pez is completing a practicum at The Tyee.