Operational staff leading change and reducing paperwork

What we did

Hampshire County Council Adult Services set up a Personalisation Review Programme to take a fundamental look at the SDS business process, tools and documents, information and guidance, and the client IT system. A dedicated programme manager and a small team of three, visited all the adult social care teams in each office at their desks to build a detailed understanding of how the current system worked and to hear practitioner's suggestions for improvement. The feedback then became evidence and a baseline for improvement. An Operational Group was set up made up mainly of practitioners and senior practitioners across specialisms and care groups. The group meets fortnightly to look at specific aspects of the SDS process and so far have come up with proposed improvements that are continuously sent round to teams for feedback. This has helped and supported the ongoing communication and also reassured staff that they were being listened to. A sub-group was also set up to work with IT colleagues to find ways of making the system more 'user friendly' for SDS. To support implementation of the changes a training programme has been designed where members of the Operational Group act as team champions and assist with post training support. The training programme will run in two phases with each area receiving the first phase, Think Differently, which will address cultural change, followed by training on systems and documentation to support the process. It is currently planned for rollout to commence towards the latter part of 2013. It has been important to listen, ensure that the changes are fit for purpose and to take the time to get this right.

Why we did it

In summer 2012 the council implemented a single business process for SDS. Having checked how the implementation was going it was found that it was not being applied consistently by teams across the county.

Outcome

Implementation of the review has resulted in improved documentation, including a clearer assessment and support plan, a simpler customer journey with fewer delays, and have contributed towards reduced waiting times. Recording will improve as a result of having a more intuitive system. The main driver and success will be that the changes have freed up practitioner time so that they spend much more time working directly with people using services and far less on system work. That the changes have been generated by practitioners has improved motivation and ownership.

Contact details

Katherine Flower
Programme Manager
Hampshire County Council
Katherine.Flower@hants.gov.uk
Tel: 01962 845545