I'm a member of Glasgow Children's Panel, volunteering about once a month to sit as one of three lay people deciding cases in the children's hearing system.This can lead to conflicts of interest, when the system becomes newsworthy.

Like many of those involved in the system, I've been aware for a while that all is not well with the reporters, the officials whose legal duty it is to decide when a child needs to come before a children's panel.

However I didn't write about the levels of chaos caused by the introduction of a new computer system at the Scottish Children's Reporters' Administration (SCRA) until a senior official in the Glasgow panel system - depute local Authority Chair Alan Hughes - wrote out to every panel member in the city to alert them to the problems and issue a plea for help.

When a letter is sent to in excess of 600 people, for me, it enters the public domain and so I ran with the story.

But not all the details made it into the print version this morning.

Hundreds of hearings intended to help vulnerable children - for example, those at risk due to parental neglect, abuse, drug misuse, offending, truancy or other aspects of their own behaviour - have been cancelled over the last month.

Those going ahead have been only the most urgent - those which must be held to meet sheriff court timetables, those involving a child being taken into custody, or cases where an order protecting a child is urgently needed, or is about to lapse.

The situation is most pressing in Glasgow, which has the largest panel and the most cases.

Children's panels are organised - at least until the introduction of the new Children's Hearings Scotland (CHS) set-up in the summer - at a local authority level.

Glasgow's Children's Panel has agreed with SCRA to ask its panel members to do everything they can to avoid causing extra work in the system.

This means that they are being urged not to continue cases to a further hearing, or to order an early review of any decision they reach.

Mr Hughes carefully-worded letter suggests this could mean departing from national standards and suggests panel members may need to depart from best practice.

Best practice would include, for instance, never making a decision in the absence of an up-to-date social work report, or if a decision is taken in the absence of someone who really should be present, calling an early review.

Mr Hughes, in his letter, is clearly uneasy: "Let me try to be clear, that you are only being asked as always to use your best judgement on the day, BUT to take account of the current exceptional situation when applying normal best practice rules."

This seems hard to square, and panel members I spoke to yesterday were uncomfortable with it. One described it as a recipe for decisions to be appealed and overturned at the Sheriff Court, while another senior figure said it should be an absolute principle that when the hearing door closes and a hearing begins, the three panel members should have nothing else at all influencing their decisions but the best interests of the child in front of them.

It's my belief that the vast majority of serving panel members in Scotland will feel the same way.

Angela McGroarty, chair of the Scottish Association of Children's Panels (SACP) told me: "While recognising the problems SCRA are experiencing regarding their IT systems and the scheduling of hearings, it remains vital as always that panel members ensure their decisions are legal, robust and in the best interests of the child concerned. That must remain their only focus."

SCRA itself has not denied the difficulties being caused as staff wrestle with the new IT system, but insist the benefits will ultimately be felt in better handling of case work, with the new database able to include more information than the old one which dates from 2000.

Neil Hunter, SCRA's Principal Reporter/Chief Executive told me: "We wanted to create a modern, more flexible document management system to handle all our case work for children and young people. The new system - which will be completely rolled out across Scotland as of next week - will also be managed in house by SCRA which will allow more longer term flexibility."

Migration of the data of 140,000 children from the old database to the new will conclude this weekend he added: "Thereafter we will move to the next phase of fine tuning system performance to meet the expectations of business as usual."

Anecdotally, the problem is affecting other areas as well as Glasgow. Mr Hunter says problems have been confined to the busiest offices, explaining: "A detailed plan was developed and implemented to ensure the roll out across the country was as smooth as possible. This involved training every operational member of staff for five full days. As a result, non urgent Hearings were rescheduled as part of a temporary prioritisation programme in some of our busiest offices including Glasgow. This was to ensure that the most urgent cases, involving the most vulnerable children (cases like Child Protection Orders) were dealt with as usual."

So that is where we are at present. Glasgow panel members have been promised an update by the end of the month, while the national picture may become more apparent after a meeting of the SACP this weekend. SCRA is also suggesting the end of April will mark the end of crisis measures in Glasgow. "We have tried to keep disruption to a minimum and no Hearings were permanently cancelled," Mr Hunter says.

Despite Glasgow's plea to its panel members, Mr Hunter says decisions will not be affected by the IT system. "The new system is about improved electronic recording of information," he explains. "It does not impact on decision making about children." But in the short term, surely, that remains to be seen.