Coventry City Council Transforms Adult Services with Self-Directed Support Solution

Transcription

1 CASE STUDY Coventry City Council Transforms Adult Services with Self-Directed Support Solution CLIENT Coventry s Adult & Older People Services employs 725 staff providing social care services to approximately 8,500 citizens. SITUATION The Council needed a new information system to meet the information and technical requirements necessary to deliver the change agenda within adult social care. SOLUTION Coventry City Council chose CareDirector built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM to support adult care case management, service provision, social care finance and self-directed support, all from a single information system OUTCOMES Improved speed and efficiency of service provision Streamlined business processes Delivering self-directed support Comprehensive client records held centrally Coventry City Council Transforms Adult Services with Self-Directed Support Solution In 2010, Coventry City Council implemented CareDirector for Adults to replace an in-house information system, which was dated and lacking in functionality to support the changing service environment for the delivery of adult social care. The council was looking for a system to support new citizen-centric ways of working and to help frontline staff deliver services more effectively. Following an extensive evaluation of available information systems, Coventry City Council selected CareDirector built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM to support adult care case management, service provision, social care finance and selfdirected support, all from a single information system. Frontline staff can now create and access comprehensive client records from a central location. Repetitive and wasteful processes have been eliminated. Assessments and subsequent care planning and reviews are effective and co-ordinated, reducing costs and improving timescales. Calculations and payments of personal budgets and contributions from service users are managed within CareDirector, avoiding errors and unnecessary checking and cross referencing.

2 1. CLIENT Coventry City Council is a metropolitan authority located in the West Midlands. It is the biggest single organisation in Coventry with a workforce of 16,000 people serving a population of approximately 307,000 people. Coventry City Council has always been a progressive, future looking organisation and over the past few years has made major changes, modernised its working practices and in many areas become a beacon for good practice. In 2009, under a new Chief Executive, the Council launched an ambitious change programme the ABC programme A Better Council for A Bolder Coventry with a pledge to review every Council service over the next five years. The programme is based on the principles that the Council needs to be more flexible, agile and innovative, operating with a smaller workforce, based in fewer locations and harnessing the power of technology to work more efficiently. As a result of this programme, Coventry Social Care Services have embarked upon an extensive programme of change (Connecting Care) to transform the service user and carer experience by bringing decision making processes and choices closer to the individual. 2. SITUATION Coventry s Adult & Older People Services employs 725 staff. Of these 450 are practitioners with the remainder being a combination of management, administrative and financial staff. Frontline staff provides social care services to approximately 8,500 citizens. Supporting them was an in-house information system, which was dated and lacking in functionality. The bespoke system was largely targeted at administrative usage rather than practitioner input and unable to support the changing service environment for the delivery of social care to adults and older people. The Connecting Care programme was set up to manage the replacement this system. The council was looking for an information system to support new citizen-centric ways of working and to help frontline staff deliver services more effectively. The requirement was to implement a system offering opportunities to further challenge working practices and extend information management and information sharing possibilities both internally and externally in partnership with other agencies. Under the project sponsor, Simon Brake, Coventry s Assistant Director for Policy and Performance, the council also took the opportunity to overhaul the entire suite of social care processes and documentation in tandem with the renewal of its case management information system. Following an extensive evaluation of available information systems through an open procurement processes, the Council chose CareDirector as most closely meeting the requirements of the Council in respect of the functionality required and overall cost of implementing and operating the system. Uniquely CareDirector has been developed using current software technology, Dynamics CRM from Microsoft, which provides built in integration with other Microsoft products used by the Council (Office, Exchange, Middleware).

3 3. SOLUTION The main areas of functionalities supported in this implementation are adult care case management, service provision, finance, self-directed support and performance management and reporting, all in a single information system. The contract lasts for six years and includes associated CareWorks technical and consultancy services to implement and operate the system successfully. The project started in late 2009 with a target date for full operational status by October 31st While contracts were exchanged in late 2009 the CareDirector project started in earnest in April Key personnel at Coventry City Council were unavailable due to competing projects. As well as undertaking a full system replacement of their Adult social care system, Coventry was also engaged in the replacement of their Children s and Families social care system with another supplier. Delays encountered meant that key project leads for project management and data migration were unable to be released until the Children s system was live and initial teething issues resolved. phase, the to be processes were documented and agreed while the initial stages of the data migration were successfully completed. End user training started in late August CareWorks provided three separate half-day training sessions covering the clients module, referrals, assessments and service provision to more than 400 staff. In addition up to 30 system champions were identified and trained to provide in-team support, advice and guidance. Specialist finance training was provided for a smaller number of staff with specific finance responsibilities. CareDirector go-live was scheduled for Monday 1st November The bespoke system was made read-only during the preceding week to facilitate the final data migration, and final user acceptance was achieved by lunch time on Saturday October 30th. On the go-live morning and for the critical first few weeks of operation, business support was provided by a combination of the project team, the trainers and the system champions, across 7 locations in Coventry. Only minor issues were encountered in adapting to the new system and to the new business processes that will support improved outcomes and personal budgets for the citizens of Coventry city. Initially the two most critical tasks were data migration and the design of the new social care business processes. Much of the council s existing client data was held in the bespoke SURFACS system backed up by paper files and Excel spreadsheets. Business processes varied from team to team with variants of similar document in use across the service. By July 2010, following an extensive consultation

4 4. OUTCOMES Improved speed and efficiency of service provision Frontline staff previously relied on administrative support, paper files and spread sheets to record and access client data from the in-house system. They are now recording and amending client details, referrals, assessments and service provision themselves, creating and accessing a single record for each client into a central location. This brings accurate real-time information to staff supporting decision making at the earliest possible point in the process. Data is only entered once and used many times improving accuracy and efficiency. Streamlined business processes Repetitive and wasteful processes have been eliminated; widespread duplication of forms and documents has been reduced. Carers are now using a single assessment document accessible electronically by multiple workers. This ensures that assessments and subsequent care planning and reviews are effective and co-ordinated, reducing costs and improving timescales. Delivering self-directed support Calculations and payments of personal budgets and contributions from service users are managed within CareDirector, avoiding errors and unnecessary checking and cross referencing. Care Managers and frontline staff can see the details of personal budgets without the need to contact the Finance department. A single information system for social care case management, service provision and finance Staff can access all system functionality and client data in a central location. CareDirector is a single system to administer and support with common user experience across all system areas, reducing costs and avoiding unnecessary integration projects with third party systems. CareDirector facilitates the compilation of knowledge that can be used to support performance monitoring, improvement programmes, strategic planning, and service commissioning. 5. LESSONS LEARNED Resources / competing projects The resource requirements specified at the procurement stage often do not meet with the resource requirements of the project when it is actually underway. Project briefs need to include careful analysis of any competing projects and their likely impact on internal resourcing. CareWorks is using the Sure Step methodology to reduce this risk by fully scoping the tasks and resources needed early in the project. Managed Service Provider Coventry has long employed the services of an external Managed Services Provider (MSP) to support and maintain their ICT infrastructure. The contract was due to expire and was not renewed. Apart from the obvious business continuity risks, this situation

5 led to unacceptable project delays and unplanned project charges as the MSP prepared to exit the contract. In many cases Coventry had little option but to accept the timescales and project costs that had been quoted by the provider. With CareDirector, all project knowledge and expertise is retained in-house by Coventry ICT staff. Data Migration Data migration, particularly from elderly proprietary systems tends to be time consuming and difficult and generally forms part of the critical path of any project. Coventry s total reliance on their MSP for this task meant that original time and cost estimates had to be revisited and constant monitoring and escalation was required to ensure the overall project timescale was not jeopardised. Process Change Coventry City Council has initiated a radical overhaul and simplification of their social care processes. In most cases this has been welcomed and embraced by staff. Where such an amount of change is involved for staff, both in the processes they operate and the systems they use to enforce them, there is a clear need for top down leadership, communication and in some cases coercion. In Coventry, partially for reasons outlined above, this level of leadership and communication was not initially visible to staff and some difficulties and delays occurred. These were resolved by the appointment of a senior business lead with project board responsibility and backing.