Within Public Sector, information sharing is paramount between services and partner agencies since service users usually interact with multiple agencies. In order to build a picture of a service user’s situation, it is critical that there is increased transparency in the information each of this service holds.
Throughout the years, there has been a shift of culture in information sharing. Officers on the ground recognise the importance of this. There is still a need to work towards protecting service-users data and complying with information sharing protocols, however, statistics show the lack of information sharing can and have cost lives when dealing with Domestic Abuse and Anti-Social Behaviour cases.
There are multiple innovative practices that have been implemented as pilot projects, to join up services between various agencies to create safer communities. Services include housing, primary care, police, health and various charity organisations. Three large-scale initiatives that we found innovative include:
- Housing and Primary care for a unified approach to servicing housing customer needs – More than Bricks & Mortar – Housing’s role in Primary Care which saw Taff Housing Association work alongside Newport City Council.
- Trivallis, Cardiff City Council and South Wales Police information sharing pilot which saw 1000+ Anti-Social Behaviour and Domestic Abuse cases for quick case resolution and tailored support to victims. This project headed by Jon Tumelty, Community Safety Manager for Trivallis and Bonnie Navarra, Asst Police Commissioner for South Wales, saw Trivallis shortlisted for two awards in 2017
- Cardiff and Vale Health Board A&E Department’s Frequent Attenders Multi-Agency Project which saw the A&E department share information of its frequent attenders with 28 + partner agencies to ensure a frequent A&E user was set on the appropriate support pathway. It was identified that majority of frequent attenders were homeless, suffered mental health issues, loneliness, were vulnerable adults or victims of domestic abuse. This initiative led by Anna Sussex saved the health board £2.3m in a year.
As innovative as these practices are, they are also resource-intensive and time-consuming. Some of these practices include daily conference calls to discuss cases, co-working and co-location initiatives where partners from various agencies come together in one place to assess risk.
All three organisations above recognised the need to become more efficient in the way they were sharing information whilst meeting security and data protection legislation. They needed to deal with more cases quicker without the budget to grow resources.
Technology was their solution and they chose Cluster Case Management which resulted in one of our clients initiative shortlisted for two awards!
How Cluster CM enables Information sharing for Proactive Case Management
Cluster CM Collaboration Module
Through Cluster CM’s Collaboration Module, timely and secure information sharing is enabled for successful multi-agency working within the public sector and partner agencies.
- Create a secured workspace for your teams and partner organisation’s to ensure vital information is shared for a more joined-up approach. This is especially important when dealing with complex high-risk Anti-Social Behaviour and Domestic Abuse cases.
- Gain a 360 view of a person’s case. To provide better coordinated and accessible support services to improve outcomes for customers.
- Invite internal staff or partner agencies to your workspace securely to share ‘need to know’ information. By communicating incident-related information and identifying risks earlier, this will aid in early intervention efforts for your customers before the risk of harm increases.
- Access and upload information from mobile devices and share with authorised parties in just a few clicks. This ensures all information on your workspace is up to date and delivered in real-time, allowing for partner agencies to proactively manage cases and support victims.
- Secured instant messaging tools and conference capabilities allowing you to keep in touch with internal teams and external partners remotely.
Cluster CM Alerts & Notifications module
With Cluster’s Alerts and Notifications module, resources can be notified electronically via email or text message. Occurring when, a case escalates, a new incident occurs or, when a victim’s risk assessment score increases. These are just a few examples of how information can be proactively pushed to your resources allowing for quicker decision making and cost-time efficiency.
The module allows you to:
- Set up rules against a case so notifications and alerts are tailored to your requirements. Collaborators who form part of your multi-agency team are alerted to log in to a single workspace and perform an action.
- Reminders can be set for forthcoming or overdue tasks through alerts and notifications
- Triggers and Flags can be set up for each case type so you can tailor the level of alerts and notifications you receive by the severity of each case.
- Automate subsequent case actions from Alerts and Notifications such as notifying police via email and text message. Additionally, you can escalate the case to another collaborator (manager, partner agency, internal staff) and raise a severity of a case to high, depending on the case type. The opportunities for automated actions are endless.
Cluster Case Management solution allows you to alert and notify the right information to the right partners to ensure meaningful sharing is undertaken. This reduces the time taken for partner agencies to sift through volumes of data which can have a detrimental impact if vital opportunities for early intervention are missed.
Get in touch with us to find out more about how we can help your organisation :
- Improve multi-agency working and information sharing
- Meet data protection legislation whilst information sharing
- Improve cost-resource efficiencies
- Improve service delivery outcomes to your end-users