SWIMS : Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection

Social Welfare Information Management System (SWIMS) refers to a web-based [1] system developed by the Government of Ghana to document and report on the provision of social welfare services (child protection, social protection and gender-based violence) based on standard national data collection forms, workflows, referral pathways and standard operating procedures (SOPs). SWIMS has been developed for use across four areas:

The primary users of the system will be MMDA staff responsible for the provision of social protection, child protection, justice for children and gender-based violence related services. Other service providers like NGOs/CSOs, Residential Care Facilities, etc. will also be part of the prospective user group.

Click link to access SWIMS

In 2015, Ghana’s Child and Family Welfare Policy highlighted “the need for improving the overall child protection information management system for better data and evidence of impact of the expected system reform”. The National Medium-Term Development Policy Framework 2018-2021 (Focus Areas 7 and 10) also identify the development of case management and information management systems, and improvement of social and child protection, and other social service delivery as national priorities.

Case Management

Family Reunification & Alternative Care

Incident Monitoring

Monitoring and Reporting

Background

Expected Changes

Social Welfare Information Management System (SWIMS) is an online digital case management system administered by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP). It is implemented using the open-source case management platform called Primero. Since 2020, SWIMS has been hosted by UNICEF. Through this arrangement, UNICEF can deliver the latest stable version of Primero viz. cost efficient, highly available, and secure. During the first phase of SWIMS implementation in 2020, it was agreed that UNICEF hosting would be a temporary arrangement to enable a rapid scale up of the system. In order to comply with Ghanaian data regulations for handling sensitive social welfare data and Ghana’s data sovereignty, the rollout and scale up of SWIMS would be followed by a full transition to national ownership.

Since 2022, MoGCSP and UNICEF in collaboration with the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), have been working on developing a solution for SWIMS to be locally hosted in Ghana. In 2023, this solution has been developed and tested, and Ghana is ready to fully host SWIMS. The final migration of SWIMS from UNICEF to MoGCSP is scheduled to take place in Quarter 2 of 2023. The process is not expected to change the SWIMS user experience. Only the URL is expected to change. This Guidance Note provides instructions for continued use of SWIMS using the new URL.