IESE_Transform_035

ISSUE 35

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Become a Smart City ‘to benefit wellbeing’ Why joined-up data can boost citizens’ health CareCubed tool helps meet care challenges How iESE’s tool helps with uplift requests and benchmarking

Also inside: • Attendees highly rate Directors’ Briefing forums • iESE launches CareCubed Advisory Group • Our Transformation Awards Health & Social Care winners • Mind Of My Own launch new product

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Page 2 News: Directors’ Briefings meetings hailed a success.

Page 3 Feature: How becoming a Smart City could boost wellbeing.

Focus on Health and Social Care W elcome to this issue of Transform magazine

Page 4-5 CareCubed: Benchmarking, uplifts and the new Advisory Group.

Page 6-7 Feature: Our Transformation Award winners in Health & Social Care.

Page 8 Mind of My Own’s new product: My Best Life.

EDITORIAL CONTACTS TRANSFORM IS PRODUCED BY: iESE www.iese.org.uk Email: enquiries@iese.org.uk @iESELtd CREDITS: Designed by SMK Design (Aldershot) Editorial by Vicki Arnstein

which focuses on health and social care. In this issue we bring together a range of features which we hope you will find informative.

Dr Andrew Larner, We speak with experts at low-code platform provider Netcall Chief Executive about how data sharing across and within organisations can benefit the health and wellbeing of citizens (see page 3). We @LaverdaJota look at the iESE care-pricing tool CareCubed and how it can help benchmark care costs and negotiate uplift requests (pages 4 and 5) and we introduce our three 2023 Transformation Award winners in the Transformation in Health & Social Care category (pages 6 and 7). Lastly, there is a feature about a new product called My Best Life from accessible software provider Mind Of My Own which aims to help young people and their families access support and activities in their area (page 8). We hope you enjoy this edition of Transform.

Views expressed within are those of the iESE editorial team. iESE Transform is distributed to companies and individuals with an interest in reviewing, remodelling and reinventing public services.

If you have content to share in future editions, please contact annabelle.atkin@iese.org.uk

© Copyright iESE 2023

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Visit us at the ADASS stand

Directors’ Briefings sessions success

IESE WILL BE HOSTING A STAND AT THE ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS OF ADULT SOCIAL SERVICES (ADASS) CONFERENCE TAKING PLACE 26-28 APRIL IN BEDFORDSHIRE. The event brings together ADASS members to share experiences and discuss good practice and priorities for adult social care. Thought-provoking sessions and seminars will bring together key partners to discuss national perspectives on current issues, including reform developments, integrated working and social justice, health and care integration and the future of adult social care markets.

“The organisers have picked exhibitors they thought would be beneficial for directors to hear more about and CareCubed is one of those,” explained Nik Jones, Sales Executive at iESE, “This follows on from our development of The Care Home Cost of Care Tool which was commissioned by the Local Government Association and ADASS last year and which was based on iESE’s care negotiation tool CareCubed.”

The free data collection tool was developed by iESE to help local authorities meet their requirement to carry out a fair cost of care exercise on care provided to residents over the age of 65. It was used by approximately 2,000 care providers, which represents 61 per cent of all beds for this sector, and by more than 95 per cent of the councils in England mandated to take part in the exercise.

“We would like to invite all attendees to visit us at the stand to learn more about how CareCubed can help meet their care provision challenges,” Jones added.

• To book a meeting at the ADASS conference contact: nik.jones@iese.org.uk

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MORE THAN 100 SENIOR LEADERS IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE ATTENDED IESE’S RECENT DIRECTORS’ BRIEFING FORUMS, WITH ALL PARTICIPANTS WHO COMPLETED FEEDBACK FORMS RATING THE SESSIONS AS EITHER ‘VERY’ OR ‘EXTREMELY’ INFORMATIVE. iESE hosted six one-hour Directors’ Briefing online sessions free to attendees in February this year.

Every session covered the same content but gave participants a choice of dates and times. This is the second time iESE has held these events but now plans to run them more frequently in response to participant feedback.

The sessions, which were attended by senior leaders from 51 separate local authorities, aimed to outline the current situation for adult and children’s social care and the challenges faced by senior leaders. Potential solutions were outlined, including the iESE care commissioning CareCubed tool, which is already used by more than 50 per cent of UK councils. Attendees heard case studies of how the tool is helping local authority leaders meet their care challenges in both the adult and children’s markets.

The sessions, which were hosted by Craig White and Nik Jones from iESE, talked attendees through the current state of the market. “We looked at the fact that demand for social care has increased and is outstripping supply. There are increasing backlogs with more than half a million people waiting for care assessments across the country, which is up 24 per cent more than last year, and the number of people who have waited for six months has gone up by 97 per cent. Requests for care have gone up by 170 per day compared with last year. There are also 165,000 positions not filled

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in the care sector and staff turnover is at 35 per cent,” explained Nik Jones, Sales Executive at iESE. “While this paints quite a bleak picture, the iESE care commissioning tool CareCubed can help with these challenges. It is a tactical day-to-day commissioning tool but also has strategic uses which are key for directors. Among other benefits, leaders can run full costs of care exercises through the tool, carry out retrospective market analysis and help keep care local through new service design or redesign. The tool gives directors the ability to shape their market through modelling new services within the system which might be done in conjunction with a strategic partner or inhouse, reducing the risk hugely for all stakeholders. By using CareCubed you can see and start to fill gaps in your market,” Jones added.

The sessions also looked at uplift requests and the ability of the CareCubed tool to track the market and actual costs in real time through the regularly updated data which sits behind the tool, such as National Living Wage costs and inflation data. Due to these regular updates and continued investment and improvement of the tool by iESE, CareCubed can provide powerful evidence for commissioners to negotiate effectively with providers whilst understanding what sustainable costs of care are in the market.

Those who attended the session were able book a one-to-one with iESE to discuss their care challenges and how CareCubed can help address them. This offer is also open to any other interested parties by contacting iESE directly.

• To find out more about CareCubed or to book a one-to-one session with iESE please contact: craig.white@iese.org.uk

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Smart Cities can boost residents’ health and wellbeing Moving towards becoming a ‘Smart City’ should be a goal of all local authorities, experts at low-code platform provider Netcall believe, or risk missing out on valuable data insights and opportunities to protect and improve citizen wellbeing. the terminology ‘Smart City’ is likely to W behilefamiliar to all local authorities, the degree to which councils are moving towards becoming a Smart City is varied. The terminology itself could be somewhat misleading. ‘Smart City’ could be used to refer to a region or a defined geographical area of any size where technology and, most importantly, the data it generates, are used across and between organisations to improve the lives of local people.

Mark Gannon, Director Client Solutions – Public Sector at Netcall, says different local authorities have different interpretations of the term Smart City, with many approaching it tactically on a project-by-project basis, rather than strategically throughout the organisation at policy level. Where the idea of a Smart City works best is where organisations in a place share and join data to discover new insights and avoid repetitive efforts.

It can be successfully applied in any local authority remit, but one where it could have a powerful impact is in health and social care.

“The best initiatives are the ones that can connect the data silos in their own organisation but also across other organisations, whether that is acute trust, mental health, or universities.

To be properly called a Smart City it must be working with data at scale across a place,” explained Gannon. Nigel Hall, Director Client Solutions – Health at Netcall, agrees: “It is about a joined-up approach. We are seeing examples of this starting to occur. Otherwise, with data, you end up having multiple sources of the truth.

Some of this is about making sure we have a single version of the truth for each citizen that is shared appropriately and effectively where needed across the region or city.”

Health and social care is one area of local government where budgets are increasing, but as Gannon points out, this is unstainable. A goal for many local authorities is preventative healthcare

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because stopping people entering the health and social care pathway leads to better outcomes, both financially and for an individual’s wellbeing.

“Population health management and preventative care are going to be bigger things as we look to reduce the emphasis on acute care and for it to be much more based in the community and less focused on everything being done in the hospital. What we can do to deliver that is make better use of data. It is about moving data around in the right way and analysing and interpreting it appropriately to get a set of outcomes local authorities can use to prevent health deterioration among citizens rather than be reactive to it,” said Hall.

There are many ways local authorities can start to move towards becoming a Smart City at a strategic level. One key element is ensuring that whoever is driving policy at a senior level has a good understanding of what being an effective digital organisation is and looks to make connections with other organisations. Speaking to suppliers might yield benefits too as they might be willing to invest in solutions which could also save them money or help run a pilot project to show proofs of concept, such as installing sensors in the homes of vulnerable citizens to help track their activity, for example.

At Netcall, its low-code platform Liberty Create is assisting local authorities with the challenges of joining up multiple data streams. Liberty Create is a development platform which enables users to build applications quickly and easily in a drag-and-drop environment and access ready-made applications and integrations developed by Netcall and other users. Built on open standards, the platform allows integration and collaboration with existing technology and legacy systems. For example, one Netcall customer, Cumbria County Council, has used Liberty Create to develop a solution called VIPER which takes data from a range of partner

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platforms – health, social care, fire and rescue and police – to help rapidly work out who they need to assist when flooding occurs.

“One challenge Smart Cities have is that every time you get a device it comes with its own dashboard for managing it. Before long, if you have lots of devices, you have hundreds of dashboards and you are just multiplying the data silos. What you really need is something that can aggregate that data. We have an IoT (Internet of Things) layer which takes information from devices irrespective of supplier and uses that aggregated data to show insights and gives actions and workflows off the back of it. That offers a way for councils to properly manage their Smart City,” said Gannon.

The Liberty Create platform can also help manage data from existing legacy applications, such as health and social care databases: “It takes what you already have, offers something much more intuitive to move the data in the right way and provides the ability to share that information with others at the right time,” added Hall.

One thing Hall and Gannon are certain of, failing to make moves towards becoming a Smart City may mean future funding streams and opportunities are not readily available. “If companies are thinking about investing in innovation they tend to go to the places where they know innovation is welcome, supported and encouraged. If you are a council which doesn’t do that you are probably going to miss out,” said Gannon.

There is also a risk of not providing the best outcomes to local people to consider too: “There are risks of not sharing data appropriately across a patch to the health and long-term outcomes for the population,” Hall concludes.

• To find out more about Netcall and Liberty Create visit: www.netcall.com

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C A R E C U B E D

How CareCubed helps meet care challenges CareCubed is the marketleading digital care pricing tool which offers a secure online platform to support the open and transparent negotiation of care placements. It is now being used by more than half of all local authorities in England, both as a day-to-day negotiation tool and strategic planning solution. areCubed is a nationally recognised, C independent tool which produces an initial benchmark costing based on robust and regularly updated data. The guide price generated by the tool acts as a starting point for negotiations between a provider and commissioner. The tool is available as an annual subscription for care commissioners and providers. There are currently modules offered covering: Working Age Adults, Older Persons, Children & Young People and Health.

Here we share how CareCubed can be used to negotiate uplift requests and help with benchmarking care costs. We also introduce the new CareCubed Advisory Group.

Benchmarking: achieve a fair and sustainable price CareCubed is designed to help commissioners and providers negotiate and arrive at a mutually agreed fair cost of care. Powered by a wide range of regularly updated figures from official sources such as Land Registry, HMRC, Care England and the Department for Health, CareCubed can accurately benchmark the cost of care for a particular service in any given locality. Licences are available for the children’s and young persons and adult market.

CareCubed is now being used by more than 50 per cent of councils. Some providers have their own CareCubed licence, others might access the tool through a local authority’s place-based licence, and some might provide costings for commissioners to input into the system. The details provided generate a guide price for a placement which considers costs given by the provider and local and national datasets in CareCubed. Rather than dictating what the placement should cost, the benchmarked guide price generated by the tool is intended to be a starting point for negotiations between provider and commissioner.

“It is open to a provider to argue why their pricing might be higher than the benchmark and

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it is open to the commissioner to accept or reject that offer based on that information. It is not a price fixing tool, it is a tool designed to help establish what would represent value for money in their circumstances to allow the negotiation to be on an equal footing,” explains Jim Weir, Senior Consultant at iESE. One challenge commissioners face is that different providers might categorise costs differently, while others might apply a standard inflationary uplift without detailing their specific underlying costs. iESE is currently looking to work with the care industry to standardise how it attributes costs, but in the meantime, Weir advises commissioners to ask for a further breakdown where costs seem unusually high.

“You can’t just look at the headline figure, you do have to drill in a bit and find out what is included in the costings given – whether it is right for the individual, and a fair price for both commissioner and provider. Where a local authority is using CareCubed, we would encourage providers to convert their standard spreadsheet and separate their costs into the headings given in CareCubed because it is going to allow the commissioner to get a clearer understanding and turn things around much more quickly. The danger, if they don’t, is that they will be perceived as being out of line with the market without realising why. For example, what they are giving as head office costs might be showing as frontline costs in other services,” he explained. For example, some providers might regard head office costs to include support functions like HR, learning and development and IT, while others might add clinical support and regional management.

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party, Weir is keen to stress that through benchmarking, CareCubed aims to reach a fair cost of care where providers are properly reimbursed for services they provide and public money is spent in the most effective way. This includes identifying cases where placements are underfunded, allowing the opportunity for the local authority to level up: “It is not in anyone’s interest to drive providers to the wall. One of the key things to making the market work is making sure we have sustainable, well-funded services,” he added.

In one case a provider was able to demonstrate that the generated benchmark price was too low because they had taken on NHS cases and were required to continue to provide NHS terms and conditions: “If you were to benchmark that provider against other providers, their staffing costs – particularly things like pensions and holiday – would be higher than the benchmark,” Weir explained.

CareCubed allows a local authority to see what the gap is between a generated benchmark guide price and what the provider is asking for and why that gap exists. In the example above, the commissioner would be able to see how the additional cost would start to taper down over time due to staff attrition.

“Using CareCubed brings transparency to the process,” Weir added.

• To find out more about CareCubed and benchmarking contact: jim.weir@iese.org.uk

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Use CareCubed to assess uplift requests Local authorities are struggling to cope with high volumes of extraordinary uplift requests for the cost of care, but the good news is that the independent care pricing tool CareCubed offers a quick and fair solution.

How to deal with the unprecedented number of uplift requests is a problem being faced by all councils which commission care. Providers are now frequently asking for more than the standard annual inflationary increase applied by many local authorities, citing extraordinary circumstances such as the cost-of-living crisis. This leaves local authorities with many questions such as: How can we assess this request? How do we know if it is fair and reasonable? How should we respond? What evidence base can we use to challenge?

Historically, many local authorities would have negotiated the proposed increase down slightly or perhaps agreed to meet halfway. With the help of CareCubed, councils are being able to tackle these requests fairly and in a way that helps direct their limited funds to the providers which really need it.

Some local authorities, such as Surrey County Council (SCC), are using CareCubed effectively for uplift requests by embedding CareCubed into their processes. When requests come in that are above the usual inflationary uplift, providers are asked for more detail and the case is then run through CareCubed. “It is how we decide whether to agree to an uplift or not – it gives us an evidenced-based way to do that and quickly make a decision. This has allowed us to control our costs very effectively where these requests would have previously been accepted as there was no evidence base or benchmark to compare against,” said Nikki Browne, Contract and Commissioning Manager at SCC. The data which powers CareCubed is drawn from a variety of independent sources to ensure it is accurate and reliable. This allows the tool to benchmark the cost of care for a particular service. iESE updates the tool frequently and more often when necessary because the data accuracy is critical to control spiralling costs and to create a fair and sustainable market. For example, inflation figures built into the most recent interim update included an increase of more than 50 per cent for utilities and 10 per cent for food compared with March 2022. Some requests received from providers have been considerably higher than the data suggests they should be, but CareCubed allows

local authorities to do a ‘reality check’ on costs given against what the tool calculates, giving an evidence base to start negotiations.

In one recent case, SCC were asked for an extra £2,000 per week for a single placement in a six-bed setting. The provider was asked to provide a month’s worth of care logs detailing spending, care given and staffing levels. Drilling down and comparing costs to the CareCubed guideline benchmarks found the provider had included items which were not considered reasonable, including a high spend on takeaways, high head office costs and items such as parking fines. As a result, an increase of an extra £200 per week was agreed instead of £2,000.

Craig White, Head of Business Development at iESE, said some local authorities currently assess uplift requests through their own spreadsheet models, but explained that part of CareCubed’s power was in its independence. “Where uplifts are contested, it is not the local authority saying the amounts are too high, it is CareCubed and the vast amount of data that underpins it that says it is too high. The tool is recognised by providers and commissioners as being a best-of-breed tool which gives an easier starting point for negotiations and opens up a different, more open, transparent dialogue between provider and commissioner.”

He also points out that while CareCubed might identify cases where the requested uplift is beyond expected, the tool also helps sufficiency by highlighting where providers are not charging enough. “From a governance and a cost control point of view CareCubed is really powerful, but it is not just about drilling costs down, it is about making sure councils are directing their limited funds in the right way and, equally importantly, where some placements are underfunded, ensuring they can be increased so providers can keep their doors open,” he added.

White said applying across-the-board annual inflationary increases might start to give way to considering each placement individually – something CareCubed can do much quicker than has historically been possible. He points out that the issue of applying an increase to all indiscriminately is that the gap between overfunded and underfunded increases, whereas councils ideally want to bring all providers into line. “Most councils offer an inflationary annual increase to providers, but this can result in already overfunded placements getting a larger real term increase than unsustainable legacy placements. CareCubed will quickly assess and benchmark each case so that shrinking budgets can be directed to those that really need it. Using CareCubed, especially the place-based licence which allows providers

to input their costs directly into the tool in a standardised way, reduces data entry time and makes assessing uplift requests on a case-bycase basis much quicker than has previously been possible,” he explained.

White said many new CareCubed customers were keen to immediately use the tool to handle their uplift backlog: “There is an immediate need with massive potential returns in terms of limiting the impact that these requests have. CareCubed is being used creatively in so many ways now, covering both tactical day-to-day uses and strategic, marketshaping projects such as designing new services and re-commissioning, but for many this influx of uplift requests is a firefighting exercise and one which CareCubed is well equipped to help with,” he added.

• iESE hosted an uplift workshop in March with Surrey County Council. To find out more about the event or more about using CareCubed for uplift requests contact: craig.white@iese.org.uk

First CareCubed Advisory Group meeting The inaugural meeting of the CareCubed Advisory Group took place in February with senior representatives from industry bodies on the provider side and commissioner side, as well as representatives from individual care providers and local authorities.

At the first meeting the members, together with iESE, set out the intended role and scope of the Advisory Group. The major role of the group is to provide a strategic steer on CareCubed developments. The group was clear that they wanted to keep solutions-focused, always bearing in mind ‘how can we make a positive impact for those in need of care?’.

Vanda Leary, Associate Consultant at iESE, said: “We already have some very successful groups at an operational level, and we have benefited from stakeholder input to the details of functionality within CareCubed. As we develop CareCubed to the next level, the Advisory Group will help us ensure that we remain focused on the areas that will have the biggest strategic impact. In fact, it is returning to the very successful approach iESE took when developing CareCubed’s predecessor, the Care Funding Calculator.”

The key points identified at the first meeting included care workforce issues, how to reflect accommodation costs in the fair price of care and the recognition that difficult funding situations in the current climate can sometimes drive unhelpful behaviors. Taking those points forward, iESE will be considering a range of options on how pay rates are calculated and used in the CareCubed model, and how the CareCubed Charter could be further leveraged to help people work positively together in negotiation and commissioning.

Leary said the meeting had been very positive and received good feedback: “Group members especially welcomed the openness of discussion and the willingness to consider the perspectives of others. We look forward to building on this excellent start at the next meeting in June.”

• To raise issues for discussion at the Advisory Group meetings, or to find out more, contact: vanda.leary@iese.org.uk

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T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

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Transformation in Health and Social Care Award Winners 2023 This year’s iESE Awards attracted unprecedented levels of entries, with 294 submissions received from 76 public sector organisations across the UK and overseas. Here, we give an overview of three enterprising health and social care initiatives from the winners in the Transformation in Health and Social Care Award category.

The Public Sector Transformation Awards

Gold Award Winner: Isle of Wight Council (IOW) The Isle of Wight’s Living Well and Early Help Service, delivered

by Aspire Ryde and their community partners and jointly commissioned by the Island’s unitary authority and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board, took Gold in the Transformation in Health and Social Care Award category.

Designed to reduce the need for statutory intervention, the service is delivered by local people, for local people and provides both proactive and reactive help and support. The community-led approach empowers people to maximise their independence and is delivering results, including improved wellbeing, individual and community resilience, more sustainable community support and reduced demand on statutory services.

The original Living Well Service was established in 2017. Following a review in 20/21, a new service specification was co-produced and a new delivery partner, Aspire Ryde, was appointed in March 2022. The review, which included looking at Adult Social Care (ASC) demand data, identified that more than 55 per cent of older people living on the island did not meet the threshold to receive council-funded ASC. In addition, it found approximately 40 per cent of local people approaching ASC were deemed not eligible. They were then being signposted to various other organisations but inevitably returned to ASC in the future, with reduced wellbeing, unable to able to live well independently in their communities and own homes. This often led to these individuals requiring statutory service intervention, often with higher care needs sooner in their care journey.

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The review also identified several challenges highlighted by people who draw on care and support services, including the need for support for the weekends, a desire for face-to-face contact within their own community and not just office-based or telephone support, a need for help with finances, paperwork, benefit claims and accessing equipment to help them live more independently and guidance around property adaptations to make living at home easier. Local people also said they wanted an electronic referral form which could be shared between organisations to avoid having to repeat their story.

The new Living Well and Early Help Service, which is accessible to all IOW residents through four key geographic locations and to rural localities though a mobile support hub, went live on 1st April 2022. Of the 2,389 people supported so far, less than one per cent have been referred for statutory service intervention. Help can include anything from social contact and building people’s support circles, to referrals into community groups nearby or linking them with the job centre, housing support, health and social care assistance or cost of living help, for example.

The service provides wraparound support and engages the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprises (VCSEs), Town, Parish and Community Councils. Through all partners working collaboratively, people who may previously have been passed from ‘pillar to post’ are now supported seamlessly. The service has been delivered at a time when health and social care funding is under greater pressure to deliver and maximise value. Without this initiative there may otherwise have been reductions in non-statutory spend, but the island’s health and care system took the decision to maintain and align joint funding to sustain a community model of support.

Local people are now being looked at holistically rather than the historic approach of separate services

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commissioned by each organisation, bringing an added benefit of removal of duplication of resources and better investment of limited public funds.

While it is still early days, the service is already demonstrating significant impact. Users report that they feel more confident, can manage their own care, and feel much more part of their community and not a burden upon it. There are numerous examples, such as a lady with a physically disability who first contacted the service about her electricity arrears. Having been supported she is now setting up a sewing group for others in her community to help reduce isolation and loneliness. Another lady with severe depression and anxiety was referred to the Living Well and Early Help Service. Following community support she has been helped to visit the job centre, apply for Personal Independence Payments and universal credit and has begun socialising.

Laura Gaudion, Director of Adult Social Care and Housing Needs at the Isle of Wight Council, said: “This is such a well-deserved accolade for a team that has truly put the community at the heart of their work. This is an outstanding service that empowers people to maximise their independence, while reducing the need for statutory interventions.

“The service has had significant impact with less than one per cent of the people it is supporting needing help from statutory services. We will see it change and grow to meet our local demands as they evolve. The service is now linked up to give debt advice, for example, which it was never intended to do. It is about building on what we have got, continuing to grow in that offer and equally investing in making sure we don’t just hear from the people we hear from. We want to ensure we reach people through a different route who ordinarily might not chose to engage with ASC services,” she said.

Trevor Nicholas, chief executive of Aspire Ryde, said: “This award is a testament to the close working between the Isle of Wight Council, the NHS and voluntary sector partners and it’s wonderful to have this recognised at a national level. We are really proud of our whole team who have worked so hard to achieve our vision for the service.”

• To find out more about the Living Well and Early Help Partnership visit lweh.org.uk

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The Public Sector Transformation Awards

Silver Award: Insight Bristol Hub at Bristol City Council The Insight Bristol team at Bristol City Council (BCC) were awarded Silver in the Health and Social Care category for two initiatives which help safeguarding experts to speedily identify those most in need.

The work of BCC Insight’s team builds on a project called the Think Family Database which was recognised at a previous iESE Transform Awards in 2018. The initiatives awarded this year, called Think Family Notifications and the Think Family Education app, build on BCC’s success with its Think Family Database.

The Think Family Database pulls together data from around 60 different public sector sources to create a rich and diverse dataset covering the 54,000 families across Bristol. The database is used to assist a range of public sector safeguarding staff within the local authority and helps to identify ‘at risk’ families and better coordinate their support.

In December 2021, the team began working on two linked projects to further enhance the Think Family Database: Think Family Notifications and the Think Family Education app. Key partners include education settings across Bristol and Avon and Somerset Police but information is also received from other partners across Bristol.

Think Family Notifications aims to change the way lead professionals receive information about critical events occurring in a child’s life so that they can proactively respond to the event. The Think Family Education app facilitates data sharing and information flow from partners to the local authority and then into school settings, highlighting daily when a critical event has occurred for a child. The aim behind both projects is to change working practice and begin to use data in a time efficient manner to influence proactive earlier help and improve outcomes for families.

A significant part of the project has focused on information governance. During the last 12 months the governance documents have been reviewed by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). Engagement with parent teacher panels and school governors have been completed and schools are communicating with all parents around the use of the data.

There has been positive feedback from practitioners who have said that without receiving the notification they would not have been made aware of a critical event. For example, a critical event occurred for a child in one of the schools within days of the Think Family Education app roll out. The information the app shared resulted in an emergency case review which pulled all services and the team around a family together.

Feedback from the school was that if this had occurred the week prior, they would have not been able to act and ‘potentially would not have known about the incident.’

Fiona Tudge, Director of Children and Families at Bristol City Council, said: “The work of the project

has been ground-breaking in providing direct access to real-time multi-agency safeguarding information. This has helped professionals become aware of information they would not have otherwise known and contributes to a joined up and combined approach to supporting the vulnerable children. At a time when resources are severely stretched it has helped reduce the retrieval burden for professionals.”

The work is nationally recognised with Bristol supporting many local authorities to develop their thinking, presenting to at least 20 other local authorities and government departments in the last six months. The Department for Education has recently awarded the team further funding to develop other apps specific to Social Care, which will be built and documented so that they can be replicated across the country. Funding has also been awarded to set out a national information sharing framework to help facilitate other authorities to join the journey. Furthermore, the work has also been used as a case study in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

Tim Fletcher, Data Analytics Manager at Bristol City Council, said: “It’s great to keep this innovation at the forefront of our work. This joined up pioneering approach of connecting services is now being rolled out corporately to services across the local authority.”

Kelvin Graham, Insight Bristol Hub Manager at Bristol City Council, added: “For the team to be recognised nationally for the work that we are doing is rewarding. This recognition supports conversations with partners to share information and encourage a connected multi-agency approach to data sharing.”

• Read more about the Insight Hub here: www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/social-care-andhealth/children-and-families/insight-bristol

The Public Sector Transformation Awards

Bronze Award: Kent County Council Kent County Council won the iESE Bronze Award in the Transformation in Health and Social Care category for its work in growing the support available to its residents through Community MicroEnterprises.

As part of its Adult Social Care Strategy 2022-2027, Making a difference every day, Kent County Council (KCC) wanted to further support older people, people with a disability (both learning and physical) and people wanting to improve their mental health and wellbeing. The desire was to provide these residents with a range of options to choose from and work with to achieve the outcomes that matter to them. A review found these options were not immediately available or visible, leading KCC to

invest in its community offer to sit alongside the current commissioned care and support services.

Since January 2022, KCC has been working with Community Catalysts (CICs) to support local people in Kent to set up and run Community Micro-Enterprises (CMEs). A CME is an initiative which supports people within their community with eight or fewer full-time staff or volunteers and which is independent of any larger organisation. They offer a truly local and personcentred approach that is more rewarding for the people delivering and receiving the services. The services provided vary from people delivering care and support in a resident’s own home to community activities like music classes for people with learning disabilities. In addition to receiving the support required, people are also improving their links to their local communities and enabled to feel more in control of their own care.

KCC has four catalysts working across Kent with a remit to help CMEs link to local teams, community wardens and other business support organisations and to support CMEs to set up, expand or diversify and meet direct links with operational teams. While it is still early days, there are already more than 30 CMEs operating within Kent. This has built additional capacity for 387 people to be supported with day activities and an additional 500 hours of care and support in the home which is available to self-funders and those who receive council funding via a direct payment.

Local (district level) councils and housing associations have utilised some of the enterprises to undertake ad hoc specialist work, including assisting with hoarding. The feedback from both the organisations and the people supported has been excellent.

The target is to have 350 CMEs set up supporting approximately 2,500 people within Kent. Seed Fund panels have been created to review applications for grant payments and, already, 16 Seed Fund grant payments have been made to allow CMEs to set up or diversify without incurring additional upfront costs.

Helen Gillian, Senior Responsible Officer for Making a difference every day at Kent County Council, said: “We are excited to be working with Community Catalysts and on our journey to developing the support available in our local communities. In Kent, we have been working hard to ensure people have choice and control over the support they receive to enable them to live a good life. We recognise that a ‘good life’ is different for everyone and therefore developing Community MicroEnterprises supports us to be able to offer a diverse range of support to people. To win a Bronze Award at the iESE Transformation Awards is fantastic and I am proud that Kent is recognised for their innovative approaches to achieve personcentred care and support.”

To find out more contact: rachael.bushnell@kent.gov.uk

Nominations will open on Monday 4th September 2023 for the iESE Awards 2024, for more information please go to www.iese.org.uk/public-sector-transformation-awards-2024

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Helping young people live their best lives

A new product has been launched by the accessible software provider Mind Of My Own, a company which offers a suite of tools designed to help children and young people thrive and help them get their voices heard by schools and care providers. he new tool, My Best Life, has been developed in partnership with the charity NPC, a think tank and consultancy for the charity sector, and Lambeth London Borough Council. It offers young people and families access to a comprehensive directory of services, support and activities in their local area, ranging from leisure through to housing and health and wellbeing.

The digital family hub solution, which offers text-tospeech and translation into 130 languages as well as changeable backgrounds for users with dyslexia, allows individuals and their families to search councilcommissioned services to find those that are relevant. Users can also post reviews of services, providing useful data for commissioners.

After being developed and trialled by Lambeth London Borough Council, the new tool has been further developed with Together for Children Sunderland in preparation for an official launch in April 2023.

Jill Thorburn, Director at Mind Of My Own, said: “If you are a parent or a young person in an area it can be quite hard to find out what is going on. You have options like going on the council website and going

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through lots of information to find out what you need. What this product allows you to do is filter services. You can say ‘I am a young person, I am leaving care and I want to know how I get support for mental health and housing’. Through this filtering they will only see content relevant to them.

“From a local authority perspective what is useful is that people using their services can rate them.

Young people and parent feedback can then influence what is commissioned in a local authority area. Local authority commissioners can see where services are oversubscribed, where there are shortfalls in provision in sufficiency and which services have better outcomes for people who are using them. There are also benefits for providers of those services in that their information can easily get to people who need to see it,” she explained.

Thorburn said the product would also help local authorities meet a Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care requirement to provide access to a digital Family Hub. “By contacting us to find out more about My Best Life, local authorities can stop feeling challenged about how to create a Family Hub. We make digital

products, and we know how to work with local authorities to make them fit perfectly in their organisation.”

Melissa McArthur, Lead Commissioner Children’s Services at Lambeth Council, said: “My Best Life has helped us share our local services with the families and children that need them most. It is a brilliant way to have all our support resources in one place – easy for families and young people and for the local authority too.”

My Best Life has been co-created with families, young people and professionals, ensuring it meets everyone’s needs and preferences. This new product adds to several others already available from Mind Of My Own. These include One app and Express, tools which help young people communicate their views in a way that suits them, and Shout and Shout Pro, survey packages designed to help organisations understand and act on the evaluation of the services they provide.

• Find out more about My Best Life by emailing: hello@mindofmyown.org.uk

Are you confident that money spent on UPLIFTS is being directed to those that really need it to remain sustainable?

CareCubed gives you an EVIDENCE-BASE to respond quickly to an influx of extraordinary requests for funding.

iESE are offering free workshops to 10 local authorities to hear how CareCubed can be used to tackle uplift requests. To secure a workshop, please contact Craig directly at craig.white@iese.org.uk

For more information about CareCubed please go to: www.iese.org.uk/carecubed | carecubed@iese.org.uk

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