Many organisations are now experimenting with AI tools, from meeting transcription and case note summarisation to data analysis and report drafting. However, recent research from McKinsey suggests that simply giving staff access to AI tools is unlikely to deliver meaningful organisational impact on its own. Instead, organisations tend to progress through three stages of AI maturity: Enablement, Automation and Reinvention.
Many organisations are now experimenting with AI tools, from meeting transcription and case note summarisation to data analysis and report drafting. However, recent research from McKinsey suggests that simply giving staff access to AI tools is unlikely to deliver meaningful organisational impact on its own. Instead, organisations tend to progress through three stages of AI maturity: Enablement, Automation and Reinvention.
From a children’s social care perspective, this framework provides a useful way to think about where your organisation is today and what responsible progress might look like.
Horizon 1: Enablement
At this stage, individual practitioners and managers use AI tools to support parts of their existing role. Examples might include drafting emails, summarising meeting notes, generating first drafts of reports, or helping analyse data.
The benefit is often increased productivity. However, professional judgement, quality assurance and accountability remain firmly with the practitioner. For many local authorities, this is where most current AI activity sits.
Questions to consider:
- Are staff confident in using these tools safely?
- Do we have clear guidance on confidentiality, information governance and quality assurance?
- Are we helping staff understand both the benefits and limitations of AI.
Horizon 2: Automation
The second horizon focuses on improving and streamlining workflows. Rather than supporting isolated tasks, AI begins to help improve end-to-end processes.
In children’s social care, this might include:
- Automating routine administrative tasks
- Pre-populating forms from existing records
- Improving access to policies, procedures and guidance
- Reducing duplication in recording and reporting processes
The goal should not be to remove human involvement but to release professional time for direct work with children and families.
Questions to consider:
- Which administrative processes create the greatest burden for practitioners?
- Where could automation reduce duplication without increasing risk?
- How are children, families and practitioners involved in service redesign?
Horizon 3: Reinvention
The final horizon asks a more fundamental question: if AI and digital tools were available from the outset, how would we design our services differently?
For children’s social care, this is not about replacing social workers with technology. Instead, it is about rethinking how technology can strengthen practice, improve access to information, support better decision-making, and create more time for meaningful relationships.
Potential opportunities could include:
- More integrated information available at the point of practice
- Better use of data to identify emerging needs and inequalities
- Improved access to support and information for carers and families
- Services designed around children’s experiences rather than organisational structures
The Coram perspective
The three-horizon model is a helpful reminder that digital transformation is not primarily a technology challenge. It is a leadership, workforce and practice challenge.
For children’s social care, success should not be measured by how many AI tools have been deployed. Instead, we should ask whether technology is helping practitioners spend more time with children and families, improving the quality of decision-making, reducing inequity, and strengthening outcomes.
As the sector explores the opportunities presented by AI, it will be important to balance innovation with ethics, safeguarding, transparency and children’s rights. The organisations most likely to realise value will be those that focus not only on adopting technology but on thoughtfully redesigning services around the needs of children, families and the workforce.
Reflection question: Which horizon best describes your organisation today, and what would need to change to move forward responsibly?
This article is inspired by McKinsey’s three-horizons model of AI transformation and provides a children’s social care perspective on how organisations can move from AI experimentation to meaningful practice improvement.
Further reading: McKinsey & Company, From Adoption to Impact: Three Horizons of AI Transformation.