Children’s Placement Portal

The project is awarded £148,135 of funding through Round 5 of the Local Digital Fund to conduct an alpha phase.

During the alpha phase, the project team has taken a user-centred approach to develop a data model that meets the needs of the commissioners by describing market activity and is suitable for analysis.

Following extensive user research, with both commissioners and providers, the project team has documented their detailed understanding of the current contracting and purchase-to-pay processes and what their systems must do in order to integrate with them.

The next steps for the project team are the creation of interactive prototype interfaces for the contracting process. Once complete, the prototypes will be user-tested to confirm whether it is possible to get the required information whilst improving the experience for the marketplace’s users.

The project team is currently preparing their beta application through the continuous funding model (CFM) framework. The CFM interview is scheduled to take place on Wednesday 31 August. Receiving CFM will help the project team maintain momentum and continuity.

On 7 October, the project team submitted their alpha phase outputs along with a beta application, through the continuous funding framework.

On 14 October, a continuous funding panel interview took place where the team outlined their proposal for a beta phase in which they would commence the build of the Children’s Placement Portal.

The Children’s Placement Portal project, led by Birmingham City Council, has been successful in its application for continuous funding. The project will receive £350,00 in grant funding to facilitate the move into its beta delivery phase.

The project’s executive report has been signed off with each of the 14 councils formally agreeing to their financial contributions towards the cost of building and maintaining the portal, in addition to the Local Digital Fund grant. These contributions have been included in the council’s respective Forward Plans.

The project board has been set up as well as the stakeholder group. The board will meet monthly and the stakeholder group will be the platform for show and tell sessions. Kick-off meetings for each group are to be scheduled with Collaboration Manager Leon Ackie attending each to present on what is required from the project during its beta delivery phase.

The project team confirms that they will kick-off their private beta phase on 13th February.

Birmingham have completed their planning for Sprint 0. They have begun their technical design work and they are currently assessing the outputs of the alpha phase with NEC Software Solutions.

Their project kick-off meeting is scheduled for Monday 19 June.

The Birmingham project team is making significant progress with their Children’s Placement Portal. The onboarded team members have a clear understanding of the problem, established ways of working, and the tools needed to support their progress. The team has created a roadmap for research and design tasks and have begun the infrastructure design.

The team has kept stakeholders informed and involved in the project, and their valuable feedback has shaped the initial design.

The next sprint will focus on designing and testing the Create to View referral feature. Technical ‘plumbing’ is in place to enable this development to begin. Plus, they are aiming to enhance the project roadmap to provide a high-level overview of development timescales, ensuring clear direction for future progress.

The Birmingham project team have achieved several milestones this sprint. They’ve begun the development of the Create Referral feature, ensuring all necessary information is available and the product backlog is prioritised. They also successfully obtained sign-off for the View Referral designs.

While there were some challenges in commencing initial user designs and tech design for Manage Referral due to changing business process requirements, they are actively working on it and any remaining tasks will continue in the next sprint.

In preparation for the next sprint, the team is focusing on multiple key objectives including:

• enabling users to enter details for a new referral, including specifying the child’s support needs
• finalising and documenting individual referral detail designs
• making design decisions for Listings/Provider inbox based on testing and analysis with providers

The team is dedicated to addressing any challenges that arise and ensuring the project progresses smoothly, with a clear plan moving forward.

The project team is currently progressing from Sprint 10 to 11, with work at various stages. Some features are in Discovery, Design, and Development. User research is ongoing throughout these stages, and the team is preparing a testing strategy once development concludes for all features.

The Private Beta is scheduled to take place in March/April and the team is hoping to pursue further funding opportunities around that time.