Ekta Mehta, Author at CACI

How Tower Hamlets and the City of London Youth Justice Service (TH+C YJS) uses Metabase with ChildView to enhance reporting

Posted on: 15 April 2025

Reporting on the vulnerable children in the protection of youth justice services (YJSs) is vital in understanding their journeys. Context can be everything, helping YJSs to enact the right actions at the right time. Tower Hamlets and the City of London Youth Justice Service (TH+C YJS) has been using ChildView from CACI since 2014. In 2023 they made the decision to enhance their reporting function by taking advantage of ChildView’s integration with Metabase.

This case study takes a closer look at why TH+C YJS chose to do this and the results and benefits it has yielded for them.

How Tower Hamlets and the City of London YJS reported on its data before

Prior to choosing Metabase, TH+C YJS was using the standard reporting suite within ChildView. “We chose Metabase because it opens up a direct connection to the information we record in ChildView for the day-to-day oversight of the children we support,” explains Will, Senior Data Analyst at TH+C YJS.

Will, who had previously worked at Hackney YJS, was familiar with ChildView and Metabase already. “I’ve personally used Metabase since 2022 when I was in Hackney, but we’ve had it in TH+C YJS since 2023,” he explains.

What benefits has Tower Hamlets and the City of London YJS realised?

With a comprehensive reporting suite, TH+C has been able to interrogate its data in real-time whilst removing human error and manual processes. “We’ve built dashboards for almost every area of data monitoring and cleansing,” says Will. “We have a Team Management dashboard which replaced manually populated Excel forms – this completely removed the possibility for human error during manual population and enabled managers to see the performance of their staff at any time based on live data, not just ahead of monthly supervisions.”

The Metabase integration with TH+C data has also made its internal processes more efficient. “Identifying the eligibility of children for group work intervention programmes, for the Turnaround programme, and for transfer for to Probation services was streamlined, with the staff leading on those areas now only needing to check these dashboards to see all eligible children, ensuring nobody slips through the cracks,” adds Will.

“We’ve also built a number of other dashboards including granular details of our Out of Court cohort, reporting on the new YJB KPIs, detailed overviews of our referrals to partnership services, monitoring ethnic disproportionality, readiness for the HMIP inspection, monitoring reoffending without waiting for the official YJB figures and getting a handle on our Education, Training & Employment by highlighting the children whose ETE status indicates they are most in need of support.”

With a more transparent overview of the data it holds, TH+C is in a stronger position to realise improved outcomes for the vulnerable young people in its YJS.

The reports are used by around 40 users within Tower Hamlets, including all youth justice practitioners and managers, restorative justice and victims worker, business support officers and eight members of partner agencies. “Oversight of permissions through user groups is simple and ensures that no members of staff have access to any data that they shouldn’t,” says Will. “For example, victim reports and dashboards with personally identifiable information are only visible to those whose roles absolutely require it.”

How easy is it for Tower Hamlets and the City of London YJS to create new reports and insights?

“The visual Metabase query builder is easy to use for anyone with a basic understanding of the data stored in ChildView, such as previous experience with the ChildView Report Builder,” explains Will. “CACI provided guidance on which data fields are stored in which tables, and which work as ‘foreign keys’ to join separate tables together.”

“The Metabase website also has extensive guidance on its additional features, such as creating Custom Columns in the query editor which apply filtering and customisation to data without the need to add more data tables into ChildView. Adding filters to dashboards further increases the utility of Metabase reports, meaning staff can select their own name from a dropdown menu, and the reports displayed will then filter to only show data for children relevant to them.”

Conclusion

By creating agile, transparent reports, TH+C has been able to realise efficiencies of effort, enhance effectiveness in dealing with vulnerable children and remove human error from its reporting processes. Being able to rely on its own data fully, without waiting for external validation on facts and figures, supports its frontline staff in doing what they do best – improving outcomes for the children in their services.

With a transparent dataset available to the right people, TH+C can also better manage and understand its work, responding more swiftly to children and their situations as they arise, providing support where it’s most needed.

If you’re already using ChildView and would like to know more about taking advantage of the integration with Metabase, please contact your account manager for more information. If you need more information on ChildView and how it can support youth justice teams and their vital work, please visit www.caci.co.uk/childview.

Shaping a system for flood management with the Environment Agency

Posted on: 14 April 2025

The Environment Agency has chosen CACI’s Cygnum system to support its flood management response teams. With more than 7,000 staff members with incident roles, the Environment Agency has to balance long term incident response preparation with short term workforce scheduling in responding to incidents immediately. CACI are shaping Cygnum to meet these very specific requirements to underpin the Environment Agency’s response to floods.

To begin with, Cygnum is a long-established workforce management solution which is utilised by organisations such as Transport for London, the Care Quality Commission and Network Rail. It is deployed by organisations with large workforces to handle scheduling, training and competency management, either as a standalone solution or as part of a wider technology ecosystem.

Understanding the skills, experience and training of employees, assessing them, recording their results and ensuring the right people are in the right place at the right time is Cygnum’s remit.

What the Environment Agency needs for its flood management response

The Environment Agency needs a system to support its incident management responses. Such incidents vary from pollution to flooding, with its staff volunteering for two roles: duty roles, where they are on call 24/7 for one week in every eight and; incident activated where they are only called upon during active incidents. The Environment Agency works closely with other agencies such as the Met Office to help forecast flooding incidents. This helps to manage staffing numbers and understand where and when incidents are most likely to occur.

Staffing is only one facet of incident response at the Environment Agency, though. When responding to an incident such a flood, there is also the need for a lot of equipment. The severity of the incident must be decided upon and the response activated. In a live environment, this can also need to be scaled up or down. Being able to call upon specialist equipment and appropriate operators in real time is essential.

How Cygnum has been shaped to assist with flood management

Cygnum has long supported organisations in workforce management. This covers scheduling, competency management and training, with all three being interlinked. You need to schedule staff, you need to know that they’re appropriately skilled, qualified and experienced (competent) for the tasks they’re being scheduled to and you need to assess their performance, provide ongoing training where necessary and upskill staff from within. That’s a very high level overview of workforce management.

The unique challenge with the Environment Agency for Cygnum is in overlaying the scheduling of equipment onto tasks. Similarly to scheduling people, you need to know that equipment is fit for purpose.

In an incident response scenario, the equipment is unlikely to be in the same location as the people. What equipment is needed to respond to an incident? Who has the skills to operate the equipment? Where is the equipment and where are the staff who can operate it? Is it in use anywhere else? Then there are other factors such as repairs and servicing. Having an accurate and complete overview of equipment, similarly to staff, is essential in effective incident response.

Bringing schedules and availability together

Environmental incidents require urgent action, so it’s vital to be able to bring together the schedules and experiences of staff with the availability and suitability of equipment. Quickly.

In creating an incident management response framework, Cygnum has to overlay these two areas. This provides transparency and, crucially, accurate real-time information on the availability of staff and tools.

This facilitates decision making appropriate to the level and nature of an incident. Rather than manually searching records and locating items piecemeal, informed decisions can be made from a central screen. From this, actions can be determined and mapped out.

This helps to reduce human error, since rules can be established to prevent an action from being implemented in the event that either the staff member or piece of equipment is unsuitable for the task.

For example, if someone is on site somewhere else or a piece of equipment has been damaged in its last usage, neither are appropriate for the task at hand. Having immediate oversight of this prevents assumptions and errors.

Building your system around you

Every organisation has different, bespoke requirements when it comes to managing their workforce and responding to incidents that impact upon service delivery. In delivering Cygnum, we are always working in close partnership with organisations to ensure that their individual needs are met.

This means no two implementations are the same, but allows us to work with a wide array of organisations where complexity, scale and mission criticality are key. Adding incident management capability to Cygnum’s scope offers even more value to these customers.

For more information on Cygnum, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/

Achieving outstanding CQC inspection results in your care service

Posted on: 13 March 2025

If you’re facing tightening budgets and an increased demand for efficiency, understanding the specifics of how your care service runs is essential. If you’re facing the scrutiny of a CQC inspection, understanding and being able to portray how your care service runs is also essential. Modern systems play a fundamental role in supporting care services to achieve these aims. From acting as a central database to helping software users collate and interrogate the data they need, having the right care management software in place can make reporting and your CQC inspection that much easier.

Displaying accurate data depends upon accurate data capture. By giving prominence to data within your care service, you can help to ensure its smooth transition from the point of recording through to displaying it in reporting dashboards across your organisation.

Your data, displayed your way

Being able to easily access, examine and report on the data produced across your services is important in understanding care delivery, what’s working and what can be improved. This covers point of care delivery through to financial management.

It is, therefore, important to provide each user with easy access to the data they need. Your care management software provider should be able to help you here. Certa, for example, is provided with a suite of out of the box reporting and dashboards. These cover the areas of your operation that you need, with the ability for you to self-serve and create your own reports and dashboards. Of course, our team is on hand to assist you when you need.

If that sounds daunting, system training is readily available to those who need it and is covered at the point of implementation.

This gives you the freedom to interrogate your data your way, not just work with a one size fits all solution.

Understand your care services

With robust and bespoke reporting mechanisms in place, you can truly get under the bonnet of your care services. What is working well? What could be improved? Where can efficiencies be found?

Only with the right software supporting you can you answer those questions.

Okay, so what do I need to be looking at?

To get you started, Certa provides the following reporting tools upon implementation, although you can set up bespoke reports or fall back on our team to help you:

Operational management: Future staff usage, unplanned visit analysis, missed visits, real-time care worker analysis, my tasks (what the user has to complete) and staff compliance (e.g. key accreditations and where they might be expiring).
Client management: A full overview of each client’s timeline, covering previous and planned visits, actions taken and billing.
Financial management: Full timesheet reporting with an audit trail of authorisations for timely and accurate billing and pay.
System administration: A complete audit of system users and admin trails.
Senior management: Profitability reporting and business insights.
Client portal: Planned and delivered care with the ability for clients, their friends and family and to see what has happened and what is planned for future visits.

How does this help with CQC inspections?

The CQC, at the point of inspection of your services, will ask five key questions in line with its single assessment framework (SAF). Is you service safe? Effective? Caring? Responsive to people’s needs? Well led?

Whilst parts of the assessment comprise speaking with your staff, opening up your service to inspectors greatly assists in transparently laying out how you work. From here, you can evidence that visits are being conducted by trained, compliant staff in a timely manner, that you consider and respond to the needs of your clients and that you provide the best possible environment in which your carers can succeed in delivering services.

This demonstrates that you’re safe, effective, responsive and well led. To help you with this, we’ve put together a comprehensive CQC inspection checklist, which you can get for free here.

Conclusion

With the aim of your service doubtless being outstanding care delivery to your clients, being able to easily monitor this constantly helps to keep your services on track all the time.

Making reporting and analysis part of your business process makes your services constantly transparent. This makes it easier to identify patterns in your business, understanding what’s working well and what could be improved.

It further helps in demonstrating the quality of your services to prospective clients. CQC inspections are irregular and imperfect as a means of showcasing suitability to clients, so being able to put an arm around their shoulder with aspects such as a friends and family portal makes your services transparent to your clients, too.

You have all the necessary information on your services already, but it’s making it easily accessible and transparent that’s often the difficult part. Certa aims to make this straightforward, putting reporting and insight front and centre of your care management software.

Check out our CQC checklist for a comprehensive guide to preparing for inspections, and head to www.caci.co.uk/certa for more information on Certa.

CQC inspections: what is the new framework & how often are inspections?

Posted on: 12 February 2025

The new CQC inspection framework poses five key questions of care services. Our checklist is designed to help you be prepared

CQC inspections are a challenging and stressful time for any care service provider. There is always an element of the unknown. However, if you have everything in place it can make the process as smooth as possible and alleviate much of the stress and uncertainty. We’ve created a free checklist that you can use to help prepare for your CQC inspections. To start, we wanted to look at the CQC inspection framework and how often are CQC inspections.

How often are CQC inspections?

How often CQC inspections are conducted on care services depends on when the care service was registered and the results of any previous inspections carried out.

For newly registered care services, they will be inspected within the first 12 months of opening.

If a care service achieves a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ result, then they will be inspected again within the next five years. From CQC data available from August 2023, c.5% of adult social care services in England were rated as outstanding, or roughly 1200 services. Achieving such a result within the CQC’s new inspection framework satisfies them that a service is meeting or exceeding the minimum expectations of recipients of care.

Where a result falls below this and achieves a CQC inspection result of ‘requires improvement’, the CQC will inspect that service again within the next 12 months, until such a time that the CQC has determined that the service has improved.

Falling below that and achieving a result of ‘inadequate’ according to the CQC’s inspection framework means that a care service will be inspected within six months. Improvement in such services is considered urgent, so inspections are more frequent to ensure that the necessary improvements happen.

The CQC’s new inspection framework

The CQC’s new inspection framework is its single assessment framework (SAF). This CQC inspection framework asks five key questions of every service it inspects. The CQC asks if services are:

Safe
Effective
Caring
Responsive to people’s needs
Well led

By obtaining responses to these five key questions, the CQC’s new inspection framework gains deeper understanding of each care service. The CQC answers these questions by visiting the care service, speaking with employees and clients and going through care records, any complaints and feedback.

How often are CQC inspections and how can you ace them?

You want the answer to be ‘every five years’. Obviously, you want to be inspected as infrequently as possible. This is the surest sign that your care services are on the right path.

To help you in achieving this, we’ve put together a checklist that helps you to prepare for inspections inline with the CQC’s inspection framework.

The checklist takes you through each question in the single assessment framework (SAF), helping you to prepare documents, responses and ensure that staff are briefed prior to a CQC inspection.

Why not take a look? The checklist is free to download and you get your copy here.

School exclusions have doubled in the past decade. What can we do?

Posted on: 11 December 2024

School exclusions have been in the news again recently, with the BBC saying that they’ve doubled in the past decade. Fixed term exclusions, or suspensions, are twice as high as they were 10 years ago and permanent exclusions have shot up by 70%. Scratching beneath the surface of the numbers, 90% of those permanently excluded have special educational needs or disabilities (SEND). The numbers in the BBC’s report focus on primary schools, but this is a trend that we have discussed previously across the entirety of the education system.

What was clear then, too, was the disadvantaging of the disadvantaged. Children from deprived areas are far more likely to face some form of exclusion than their peers. This is evidenced by the likelihood of children eligible for free school meals facing exclusion. 67% of pupils with an exclusion or suspension at primary school had also been on free school meals, according to research by the children’s charity ChanceUK.

ChanceUK further finds that 90% of children excluded at primary school fail their English and Maths GCSEs. There is a lasting impact to exclusion, be it permanent or fixed, that an increasing number of children and their families are facing up to.

How can school exclusions be reduced?

The recurring link between disadvantage and SEND to school exclusions tells its own story. The longer children go with unmet needs, the longer their behaviour is going to be punished in school settings. Rather than understanding and interpreting a child’s behaviour, it can be easier for schools to exclude them. This, on the face of it, is justifiable, too. If a child is persistently disrupting lessons and impacting the education of their classmates, then the school has to act.

Identifying unmet needs earlier is essential. As we found out with Milton Keynes last year, 88% of children in contact with youth offending teams in the locality were found to have unidentified speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). “Communication and the understanding that comes from this is key to thinking, processing, anticipating and understanding consequences,” they told us. “If we carried on as if children automatically have these skills, when it was clear they don’t, this was a recipe for failure carrying consequences for these children and for the rest of society.”

Joining the dots between education and circumstance is essential. It’s imperative that understanding is built between schools and those pupils deemed disruptive. The likelihood of them falling into criminality rises exponentially once they are excluded, as evidenced by 88% of children in contact with youth justice services in Milton Keynes having SLCN.

Where context and understanding are built into the system around children, it makes it easier to identify those children most at risk of having SLCN and SEND. From there, preventative steps can be taken.

Can technology support a reduction in school exclusions?

The role of technology systems will be fundamental in reducing the number of school exclusions. More prosaic aspects such as the school admissions process can help to ensure that children are attending the right school. This extends to the right school in terms of locality to their home, increasing the likelihood of attendance. From there, any needs can be considered in a central system when assigning children to school places.

Where SEND is suspected, it’s important that referrals are made and assessments conducted as soon as possible. This will then lead into other aspects of the child’s journey such as education health and care plans (EHCPs). It is vital that all information is easily recorded and easily accessed by relevant parties involved in the child’s journey.

Making data easily accessible is an important point. Linking education to circumstances drives understanding. Creating a hub through which parents, schools and professionals can log and access information on a child makes navigating their journey more straightforward. It also builds rich data insights, further enhancing knowledge and understanding of processes that work in combatting aspects such as school exclusions.

Find out how Impulse can help

CACI’s education management system, Impulse, provides education services and local authorities with the information they need to understand each child’s journey. With specialist SEND, EHCP, admissions and social inclusion modules, it supports the parts of the process you need supporting.

At CACI, we also support more than 70% of youth justice services in the UK. This builds a clear link between education and youth justice, something that is prevalent in the case of school inclusions. Our work helps to support children and their families in that context. It also helps schools to prevent them from ever getting there.

For more information, contact us now.

Single view of a child – linking youth justice to education

Posted on: 18 November 2024

Whilst the operations of education and youth justice practitioners run separate from one another, there are areas of overlap. In these areas, information sharing and working from the same record can be beneficial to both parties. Ultimately, it is also beneficial to the young people involved. A shared understanding via a single view of each young person can help in both intervention and improving outcomes for vulnerable young people.

Common understanding over crucial matters is a prerequisite. For example, where children are arrested, their school must be informed. This means that schools need to be able to send and receive information to and from the police and youth justice workers.

Whilst that might be an extreme example, it does of course happen. The sharing of information is the crucial aspect here, though. How far can this be extended to improve outcomes for children? Such examples highlight that information sharing is possible.

Attendance records

With every child required to attend school, their attendance data is instructive, not only to their school and parents/carers, but where applicable, social and youth justice workers too. Where a young person who is in the youth justice system misses school, it is imperative that this information is shared with their youth justice team.

Children missing school is an obvious red flag to youth justice and social workers. Mandatory reporting on the attendance of looked after children is already in place, further reporting on children known to other external agencies can help them greatly.

Sharing information and data is a key area in preventing children and young people from falling through the cracks.

How can shared data help in a multi-agency scenario?

There are various estimates as to the number of children missing education. This depends upon the parameters set and the threshold of days missed. NCB estimates that the number is just shy of 50,000. This number is for children who are not registered at a school and are not receiving appropriate home schooling.

Running parallel to this is the estimate that some 50,000 children are involved in county lines drug dealing activities. Of course, not every child missing education is going to be involved in such activities, but the numbers bear a striking similarity. If children aren’t at school, what are they doing? Perhaps more pertinently, under the auspices of which agency do they fall?

When children fall into the youth justice sector, an understanding of their school attendance record can be insightful in painting a picture of their journey. Non-attendance gives some strong clues as to what they may have been doing. Establishing this data link with education can help youth justice teams and workers greatly.

Similarly, when a child moves school, it is beneficial that their new school has a clear record of them. If they have been involved with youth justice workers, it can help in understanding their background and their requirements. Similarly, where health concerns are prevalent, it’s important that the school has oversight of such information.

A single view of the child

This is a topic we’ve explored in our recent white paper. “At present we are seeing far too many examples of children not receiving the care they need because of a disjointed service and system response. Teachers, care and social workers, police, parents, local authority professionals and youth justice workers – even doctors and health professionals – are all stretched; piecing together a young person’s story from disparate information points makes an already challenging task even more so. Information on a young person is too often siloed and inaccessible.”

The information held by one agency is often valuable to another. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so creating efficiency and a more joined-up response to the needs of vulnerable young people makes a great deal of sense.

This can be achieved with a single view of the child. If there’s a consistent record that can be accessed and added to by multiple agencies, it makes it far easier for disparate parts of the system response to work efficiently and effectively.

Conclusion

There are demonstrably strong ties between the work done in agencies such as schools and youth justice teams. Linking that work together, where necessary and appropriate, can help to improve outcomes for the children and young people in their services. It can further support the work of other professionals and agencies involved in a young person’s journey, too.

The technology exists today to help make a difference; to help join the dots in a journey. This helps to remove duplication of effort, guesswork and assumptions. If all parties can work around a single source of the truth, it makes understanding a young person’s journey and interpreting their story much easier. Bridging these gaps in understanding at schools and in youth justice teams can further help to tackle the complexity in each story. Having a basic understanding of their journey is so important in shaping their future.

This is a topic that we explored in our recent white paper, Single view of a child. You can download your free copy here.

Early Years funding rules have been in scope for change in recent times. How agile is your LA to the changes?

Posted on: 13 November 2024

Early Years funding is essential in providing the best possible outcomes to children from the outset of their educational journey. Funding depends on several factors. The rules themselves, too, are undergoing change. From eligibility to age of the child and the number of hours funded, local authorities need a system in place that can be agile to these changes. Failure to respond to Early Years funding changes can have a negative impact on children and their families. It is essential to be adaptable in the face of changing rules.

How does Early Years funding work?

Early Years funding is based on eligibility criteria. In September 2024, a new 15 hour working parent entitlement was introduced. This saw the expansion of funding extend down to nine-month-olds. In September 2025, the entitlement will be increasing to 30 hours.

This requires a re-working of the funding section of the software and systems utilised by local authorities in managing their Early Years funding. If the systems used can’t adapt to the changes, then it will necessitate a manual way of working out the rules and matching them to eligibility. This will further require manual effort in working out what is due to each provider.

Having a system in place that can work out who is owed what is important for accurate billing and payments. This includes clawbacks from providers where children have moved nursery. Without a system to support the process, human error becomes an increasingly viable factor, as do elements such as falsified and inaccurate claims.

With the rules in something of a state of flux at present, being agile to changes is vital.

How can technology support Early Years funding?

Technology can make the entire process of Early Years funding more accurate, easier for providers and easier for local authorities. Providers are required to submit headcounts to get funding from the local authority. Where local authorities can set providers up on a provider portal, it makes the process of submitting estimates, headcounts and amendments seamless for providers. It further makes the process easier for local authorities to track and manage.

This also makes it easier for the local authority to see what each provider is owed, as estimate payments are worked out, based on their bespoke percentage rules. When the providers then submit actuals through the portal, the local authority can immediately see what the outstanding balance is for each provider and settle it.

When rules change, your technology system should also be able to incorporate the new rules in a timely manner. This will result in a frictionless transition in your Early Years funding process.

How Impulse Nexus helps local authorities with their Early Years funding

We’ve designed Impulse Nexus to be responsive to rule changes, from funding periods to the age of children eligible. It is designed to make managing the end-to-end process easy. Impulse Nexus includes:

A providers’ portal through which they can submit estimates, actuals, headcounts and amendments

A live register of children at each provider

A banner to display which submission window is open, the status and how many days are remaining

A display of how many hours each child is claiming

Flags to indicate what each child is eligible for

The ability to bulk edit children’s hours

The provider can see a history of all submissions and how much was paid per child

The ability to reduce administrative time for your Early Years team

A full audit trail of submissions, payment rates and rejections

The ability to set your own funding periods, submission dates and rates

The ability to set up stretched funding models

Validation errors displayed in real time, with reasoning

Management area for local authorities to view and approve checks, validate the cross provider children, and children that haven’t yet been matched to a core record

The ability to customise funding types for legislation changes and regional requirements

Ultimately, Impulse Nexus provides you with a clear and consistent process in line with your local authority’s bespoke rules. We understand that each local authority has different rules and processes in place, so being able to implement your process is important. It’s also crucial to have a system in place that can be adapted to changes in legislation.

For more information, please visit our website.

Gaining a single view of the child in multi-agency scenarios

Posted on: 11 November 2024

Every child in the education and youth justice systems has their own, unique story. How can this story be accessed, understood and interpreted by the various agencies that they come into contact with? A single view of each child, which is accessible to the multiple agencies, helps to form a consistent thread of knowledge and understanding. This can be used to provide not only the best available care to each child, but to improve efficiency across the services they interact with.

There are several examples where different agencies require the same, or similar, information. Teachers, care and social workers, police, parents, local authority professionals and youth justice workers – even doctors and health professionals – are all stretched; piecing together a young person’s story from disparate information points makes an already challenging task even more so. Information on a young person is too often siloed and inaccessible.

Creating a single view carries many benefits for both children and professionals. This blog explores the benefits of a single view of a child. This is not to say a single system response – different technology works for different agencies. We explored how interoperability between systems will benefit children in a previous blog. This blog sets out to explore the benefit of achieving this single view.

Improved efficiency and cohesion

With resources stretched, efficiency gains are vital in being able to provide improved outcomes to more children. Where personnel and agencies change, a single view is vital in them being able to hit the ground running. Where information is inaccessible and difficult to interpret, it can result in the same questions being asked and the same ground being covered.

Make it easy for new practitioners

Turnover of staff is inevitable. Making it easy for new personnel is imperative. Not only does it create efficiency, but it makes their job much, much easier. Starting from scratch with any child or young person is a challenging phase, with the need to build understanding and trust with them, particularly in a youth justice and social care setting. If new practitioners to a child’s journey can access and interpret their story to date, it helps them to understand the child, which helps them to take proactive steps immediately towards improving their outcomes.

Improve understanding of each child

There is so much that plays into each child’s journey, and so much information that is relevant to it. From school attendance data to police and healthcare records, it is a constantly moving and evolving journey. A simple oversight of the agencies involved is instructive; what care have they received and from whom? This helps to not only understand each child individually, but to implement data mapping which forms a more holistic understanding of children in similar scenarios and what is the best way to help them.

Linking disparate responses

Each agency has information that is relevant to them and only them. Where the single view is beneficial is in areas of overlapping responses. For example, schools need to know if a pupil has been arrested. Similarly, if a child is diagnosed with SEND, that information is relevant to their entire educational journey. It is also useful information for youth justice workers in understanding young people in their services. A sharing of such information is vital in the multi-agency response to such children. If this information becomes siloed, it will hamper the response of other agencies to a young person.

Timely, accurate information

Once information is known, recording and sharing it with other agencies in a timely manner is crucial. Again, the single view is crucial, since it enables other agencies to access such relevant information against a child as soon as it is available. Accessing such information can help agency to tailor their response to a child as and when they need to interact with them.

Conclusion

The single view can be achieved in different ways, but it works to the same outcome: the improved outcomes of children and young people interacting with various agencies.

Where professionals can record their information, it is vital that it doesn’t become siloed. The sharing of relevant information with other agencies will fundamentally help them in achieving the goals they themselves set out to achieve. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so it makes sense to support this with appropriate data sharing to enhance understanding of children and young people to improve their outcomes.

This is a topic that we have explore more comprehensively in our recent white paper, which you can download for free here.

The importance of interoperability in multi-agency youth justice scenarios

Posted on: 1 November 2024

In cases around vulnerable children, we repeatedly see how many different agencies and professionals are involved in their story. For a young person in the youth justice system, there are several agencies all attempting to intervene to improve their outcomes; youth justice teams, police, social workers, their school, parents and health workers. With so many agencies potentially in play, how can a clear and consistent thread of information be created on each young person for the betterment of their journey?

A single view of the child for youth justice workers

Having access to a single thread of information, a single source of the truth, is vital. It helps to remove duplication of effort not only for each agency, but for the young person, too. With multifarious agencies turning up on a carousel of touchpoints along the journey, many covering the same ground, it erodes trust in the services that are in situ to help them.

It can be challenging enough within a single agency. Youth justice teams are stretched. Human relationships don’t work to a set plan, so changes in personnel across a young person’s journey are inevitable. How can a practitioner who is new to a young person’s case understand and interpret their story without needing to repeat previously asked questions?

A central database of activities, touchpoints and notes is essential. A single thread of information makes it easier for information to be looked at and understood. If notes are siloed into individual practitioners, for example if they are recorded only via pen and paper, then it makes it incredibly difficult for others to pick up the pieces when they need to.

If interoperability between practitioners within the same agency is impossible, then how can this information be shared effectively with other agencies?

Achieving interoperability for the benefit of youth justice work

Interoperability starts within a single agency, in the way in which information is recorded, shared and understood within it. Interoperability then needs to extend to multi-agency scenarios.

The several touchpoints in the journey of a young person within the youth justice sector demonstrate this. How can the police effectively share information with the other agencies involved? How can youth justice teams make their information available to the other agencies? By creating a mutual base of understanding around each vulnerable young person.

Understanding is essential to improving outcomes. We also see the affect of things such as trauma in a young person’s story. How can their story and circumstances be interpreted in improving their outcomes? These often intangible aspects can go undetected – having a consistent base of information can help in identifying them. There’s no one size fits all solution to dealing with youth offending, so being able to interpret and understand their journey from a comprehensive base of information is crucial.

A single source of information is to the benefit of everyone; the young person, their family and the agencies involved in their journey. But how can this be achieved?

Technology response to interoperability

The underlying system of recording information is fundamental in achieving this. In the same way that there is no one size fits all approach to improving outcomes for vulnerable young people, there is no one size fits all technology system for the agencies involved in their journey.

It is inevitable that different agencies will deploy different technology. Information and security will be different for each, as will the method of recording of information. But how can the relevant information within each agency be made available for wider use by external agencies which are seeking the same outcomes?

Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so it makes sense to share information and valuable insight. Each agency needs to understand the intervention points of the others.

Conclusion

Every touchpoint recorded with a young person in the youth justice sector is relevant to their journey. It forms part of the system response to them and their case. Having a holistic view of these touchpoints is vital for youth justice teams and workers in interpreting their story and intervening appropriately to help improve their outcomes.

Creating a single view of each child helps each agency to better contribute to their journey. Interoperability of systems is essential in achieving this. Using software that facilitates interaction and data sharing with other agencies utilising different software will facilitate this.

Where information gets siloed, it essentially gets lost. It sits within an agency in isolation, useless to the other touchpoints a vulnerable young person will have with other agencies. Bringing this information together not only creates understanding around a young person’s journey, it also creates efficiency in the process for the agencies involved.

If everyone can record on and interact with a single source of the truth, it will help every agency and youth justice worker to understand and interpret the journey of the young person.

Creating a single view of the child is a topic CACI has explored in a recent white paper, which you can download for free here.

Understanding digital care plans & the best care management software

Posted on: 29 October 2024

Person-centred plans help you to unlock the potential of your care services in delivering the best possible outcomes for each of your clients. No two recipients of your services are the same. They require different medication, different services, get on with different people and interact differently with you. This poses a challenge to your services, since there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Deploying the best care management software can help you in delivering digital care plans and digital care planning that puts your clients first and keeps them informed of their care journey. Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Digital care plans

Moving away from paper records and manual ways of planning carries numerous benefits. By creating digital care plans, you can more easily access information, edit it and share it.

Easy access to digital care plans enables you to report on them internally to better understand patterns in your services. You can then identify what works and what doesn’t. Does a client have a better relationship with one of your care workers than any other, for example? You can then consider such factors when scheduling your care workers.

One thing the CQC looks for during inspections is the role your clients play in their own care. Maintaining digital care plans makes it easier for them to input into their own care and understand their options, including for aspects such as end of life care.

The ability to share your data on clients is also a factor considered by the CQC. Being able to share aspects of your services, such as digital care plans, demonstrates that you can support your clients in their interactions with other services. For example, if they decided to join your services from somewhere else, being able to import and understand their data will help you in providing the best possible care from the very beginning.

Putting clients in control is important. The best care management software will help you by providing a portal through which clients and their loved ones can interact with their digital care plans and your services.

Digital care planning

Digital care planning puts both you and your clients in greater control of the care journey. Feeding your digital care planning into a friends and family portal puts an arm around your clients and their loved ones. Offering such transparency of your services, past, present and future, is impossible with paper records stored in an office.

Clear communication with your care workers is another vital step in delivering outstanding person-centred care to your clients. The best care management software can support your digital care planning with a mobile app. Through this, you can make your digital care plans visible to care workers as and when they need them. At each visit, you can provide clear instructions as to expected time of visit, access and medication required to be administered.

As your care workers work through their visits, they can record outcomes as they go. With real-time visit information available to you, you can then update the client’s portal accordingly, reassuring their loved ones that visits have happened.

Complete digital care planning in this way, from initial plan creation to scheduling care workers to recording visit outcomes, provides you with a complete audit trail of your services. This will make life easier when it comes to CQC inspections, for example. You will be in a strong position to simply make your digital care planning available to inspectors as part of their inspection.

How the best care management software can help you

By having all your data in one place, it makes access and transparency more straightforward. Who did what, where and when? The best care management software will enable easy interrogation of your digital care planning.

It should also be flexible to yours and your clients’ needs. No two clients are the same, nor are two care services. Being able to implement the digital care plans that you and your clients need is imperative in any outstanding care service.

Digital care plans are just one facet of how the best care management software will assist your services. Digital care planning, however, is one of the most important since it outlines how you deliver care to your clients. Ease and transparency are essential. Your software should support this.

We’ve written a free to download white paper outlining the top seven features that the best care management software should provide. From digital care plans to financial management, it should underpin your outstanding services.

Why not take a look? It’s free to download here.