North Western
Collaborative work continues with all councils in the North West building on initial projects undertaken to help councils develop improved business processes in specific issue groups that will enable collective problem solving and accelerated solution design that will add value to all councils in the region.
The issue groups are focussed on key areas of interest
- Effective Financial Assessment (a monthly schedule of meetings has been agreed with seven of the regions councils).
- Demand Forecasting
- Individual Budgets
- Empowering Customers
- Better Brokerage
- Front End Information (a workshop addressing solutions for these issues has been agreed with nine regional councils attending so far, three councils will present potential solution developments on aspects of existing work and projects underway at councils)
- Partnerships (Workshop as yet to be arranged)
- Human Resources (Workshop as yet to be arranged)
CSED are engaged on implementation with all nine of the ADASS regions in England.
Councils throughout England are now receiving regional support for implementation of the full suite of the CSED's interdependent, interlinked initiatives, tools and workstreams designed to deliver end to end solutions for sustainable efficiency improvements.
The CSED offer now includes:
- The collaboratively developed "To-Be" process for efficient and effective Assessment and Care Management
- A set of nine easy to implement Initiatives with "quick win" components designed to release speedy savings
- Solutions for improvements around council Demand Forecasting and capacity planning including:
- The highly regarded POPPI (Projecting Older People Population Information) web based tool
- Tools to develop enhanced procurement and commissioning strategies for Better Buying including:
- The TRACS database tool to assist councils with spend analysis and contract rationalisation
- Generic project skills for the development of new and existing Homecare Re-ablement schemes
- Structured, evidence based research and support for sites who have decide to implement an Electronic Monitoring system
UPDATE:
Web-based Commissioning: Web-based Commissioning initiative with Lancashire County Council.
Web-based Commissioning is an electronic process that automates the arranging of care packages. Staff choose an appropriate care package through a web interface which subsequently sends an invitation to a preferred supplier. If this provider does not accept this within a predefined timeframe then the invitation is sent to the next preferred suppliers. This initiative has resulted in better supplier management, timesavings for staff in the Local Authority and a reduction in paperwork and faxes.
Electronic Diary Management: Electronic Diary Management initiative with Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council.
This initiative aims to enable the point of contact staff to initiate the assessment process by managing the "time" of professional staff. This in turn reduces one administrative burden from social workers and redirects this effort to administration staff. Furthermore increases in customer satisfaction levels occur due to the reduction of multiple contacts when trying to establish suitable appointment dates.
Front end information: CSED have commissioned specialist analysts Quickheart to work with Stockport council to identify opportunities in better managing information channels and an improved understanding of customer behaviour. The aim of this work is to build robust business cases for work that can potentially be extrapolated across all 150 local authorities.
