AI, Evo and Children's Social Care: Access CYP Conference 2026

The Access Children and Young People's Conference on Thursday 21st May brought together a packed agenda centred on a question the sector is wrestling with daily: how do you deliver better outcomes for children and families when demand is rising, budgets are shrinking, and legacy systems are holding teams back? 

The answer, as it was the day before, kept coming back to Access Evo - and what genuinely connected, AI-powered children's services could look like in practice. 

Andy Sparkes, Access Group’s General Manager of Local Government and Technology Enabled Care, opened proceedings with the same candour that had set the tone on day one. Acknowledging that some familiar themes would resurface - AI, Evo, the pace of change - he was unapologetic about it. "Hopefully you'll get a sense of the excitement that we as a team are feeling about where we're going and what we're doing." 

The show of hands that followed told its own story. Most of the room was aware of Access Evo. Most were using AI in some form. Fewer were using it actively at work - a picture, Andy noted, that reflects where the wider sector is right now, and exactly why the day's sessions mattered. 

Andy drew a careful distinction between two types of AI use that will shape how Access Evo develops. AI used for automation - where the outcome is already known and the system can be trusted to act - is different from AI used to assist, where a human must remain in the loop to review, approve, and decide.  

"We will never use AI without telling you. Where we must have a person in the process, we would not code something to be automated,” said Andy.   

It’s a distinction that matters enormously in children's services, where, right now, the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

Chris Wilson, Product Director for Local Government and TEC, took over to set the context for Access Evo's role in children's services - and handed over to Lee Coomer, Associate Solutions Consultant, and Erica Blagg, Product Owner of Core+, for a live demonstration of what connected services actually look like in practice. 

The Navigator interface gave the room its first real look at what a single, integrated view of a child or young person could feel like - pulling together data from Access Synergy, Access Mosaic, Access Adam, and other Access products simultaneously through a single natural language search. For practitioners who currently have to dip into multiple systems to piece together a picture of a child's circumstances, the reaction was immediate. 

Fragmented records have real consequences, as Chris was direct in stating. "Serious case reviews have always shown that it is the lack of information sharing that creates risk."  

Access Evo's single view offering, with full permissions controls built in, is designed to address that at a structural level rather than as a workaround.

Dan Wilkins, Product Owner of Synergy, took the room through two of the most operationally significant developments of the day - and delivered both with a live demo that left little doubt about the pace of progress. 

The reimagined home-to-school transport solution, built within Access Evo, covers the full spectrum of managing transport provision - from online parent applications and automated eligibility checking, to route allocation, vehicle tracking, and contract commissioning. The first customer goes live this month [May].  

"In a really short space of time, we've been able to modernise the transport offering - and we're launching it live, which we're really excited about.” Dan said 

The admissions update was equally compelling. AI-assisted document verification removes the manual burden of checking incoming applications against existing records.  

An AI assistant can read documents, extract the relevant data, and suggest a verified outcome with the caseworker retaining full control to review and override. Catchment area calculations, distance checks, and record matching all happen automatically, without batch processes or manual intervention. 

Underlying both was a philosophy Chris had articulated earlier: stop asking teams to do things manually that the system can do for them, so that the time saved goes back into direct work with children and families.

Judith Nash, Data and AI Specialist for the West Midlands Regional Improvement and Innovation Alliance, brought one of the most powerful external perspectives of the two-day event. 

With 26 years in special educational needs as a EHC manager at SENCO, and now as a regional lead focusing on AI in SEND, Judith opened by sharing a personal story.  

The parent of two daughters, both with additional needs, she described the frustration of navigating a system that could deliver gold-standard inclusion for one child and fall profoundly short for another. One daughter went through school without an EHC plan and received exceptional support; the other faced a prolonged battle to get her needs recognised, changing schools along the way.  

"What's been really frustrating for me is having two daughters - one who had the absolute gold standard, and the other going to the same school and not getting the same level."  

It was a reminder that the variability in how the system responds to children with additional needs is not abstract - it plays out in real families, including those working inside it. 

Her professional lens on SEND was equally candid. The demand is not going away. The statutory timescales are not being met. The workforce is overstretched. And yet, she argued, AI and digital tools offer a genuine route through - taking the administrative burden off the people who should be focused on children and families, and putting better information in front of them when it matters. 

The SEND section of the session showcased how Access Evo is being built to support this - from AI-assisted decision making on requests for assessment, to meeting management tools that capture, transcribe, and summarise multi-agency discussions automatically.  

A particularly striking capability was a prototype tool designed to capture the voice of the child in a game-based format - allowing children with complex communication needs to express their preferences and experiences in a way that feeds directly into assessments and plans. "We want to make sure we are capturing the views, the thoughts, the voice of the child."

Becky Goodridge's demonstration of Access NotesCentre will have felt familiar to anyone who attended day one - but no less relevant for it. The rebuilt interface, configurable templates, and AI-assisted note generation all landed with the same recognition in a children's services context as they had in social care.  

The ability to capture a home visit, a multi-agency meeting, or a call with a family - and have structured, tailored notes generated within seconds - is as pressing a need in this room as any other. "It's a tool that works with you rather than against you," Becky said. Integrated through Access Evo, it connects to Access Synergy, Access Mosaic, and the wider productivity suite across the platform. 

Ellie Haworth, Head of Children’s Services Transformation and Improvement at SCIE opened the technology enabled care session by making the case for tech in children's services with characteristic wit, asking the room who owned a dishwasher, an air fryer, and a robot vacuum before making the point that technology has always been part of how we manage family life. The question is whether we apply that same instinct to children's social care. 

Nerys Hebdon walked through how Access Assure and the Access Evo platform support this in practice. From AI-powered monitoring insights that allow social workers to safely reduce dependency where the evidence supports it, to the benefits realisation tool that helps authorities move from modelling savings to banking them. The return on investment, backed by data developed with the TSA, is four to five times. 

Angela Robertson and Dan Wilkins closed the afternoon's sessions with a demonstration that brought the day full circle, and showed how the single view built within Access Evo can genuinely bridge the gap between children's services and adult social care for young people in transition. 

The collaborative working tool, configurable for multi-agency scenarios from MASH referrals to Education, Health and Care assessments, allows different agencies to contribute to a shared workspace with permissions tailored to their role.  

Access Messenger, Access NotesCentre, and AI summarisation are all integrated. "We are modernising the concept of case management," Angela said, "moving away from very structured forms and allowing more flexibility." 

Andy Sparkes closed two packed days on a note that carried added weight after everything the room had seen. The pace of development is faster than it has ever been, the tools are real and live, and what the room had seen across both conferences was only the beginning. "We haven't shown you the power of Access Evo yet. On another occasion, we will start to unlock and share what is actually built under the hood." 

If the sessions across these two days have raised questions, sparked ideas, or left you wanting to know more, we would love to hear from you!  

Get in touch with a member of our team today or visit theaccessgroup.com to find out more about our Access Evo and children's services solutions.