Government crest UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)

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Laying the foundations for better local public services

Exploring Automated Health and Social Care Assessments

Contents:

  1. Project timeline

This project, led by the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames, will investigate the automation of the social care triage, assessment and prescription process. This is to reduce manual and outsourced processes that can be inconsistent, slow and prone to error. By improving automation, the data will become machine readable and allow for easier analysis and transfer between organisations.

There is no automated way of understanding a user’s situation in order to determine their care needs and appropriate care prescriptions. 

This discovery will investigate these hypotheses:

  • we believe a user’s situation and needs are consistent across all local authorities and can be codified, allowing faster care assessment
  • we believe care prescriptions are based on locally commissioned services so must be flexible

The users have been identified and the project will explore these potential benefits:

  • benefits for the care recipient: faster care delivery so their situation doesn’t deteriorate and create more complex/costly care needs, a more adaptable service as needs change, and increased ownership of their care
  • benefits for staff: reduced assessment effort, increased consistency, and reduced incorrectly-routed requests
  • benefits for social care commissioners: person-level demand modelling and improved feedback on prescription success

This bid is part of a group that together cover the social care user journey. The other bids we funded are: User journeys into adult social care (ASC)

Project details

Phase: Discovery

Funding granted: £100,000

Partners: Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames (Lead Council), London Borough of Redbridge, London Borough of Merton, Royal Borough of Greenwich, West Berkshire Council, Dorset Council and Southwark Council

Project links

Project timeline

March 2023

The project is awarded £100,000 in funding through Round 6 of the Local Digital Fund to begin a discovery phase.

August 2023

Project roadmap shared in a recent Show and Tell (subject to changed based on feedback and learnings)

During the last sprint, Kingston held initial conversations with their partner councils, in which they walked through the discovery outcomes and outputs, before creating a high-level project plan. Their user researcher and service designer also carried out a number of site visits to care teams at Kingston and West Berkshire.

The team will now review data held within Kingston’s care assessment system, as well as seeking data from other councils, to help them identify patterns, and will commence their technical review of existing systems.

September 2023

The project team’s recent sprint focused on technology, with their Solutions Architect concentrating on automation possibilities within Adult Social Care.

To provide a baseline for the Solutions Architect, they engaged in discussions with social workers, stakeholders, and partner councils, identifying challenges within the industry. They documented these and partner councils were invited to share feedback and add any additional challenges they face.

Using this data, the Solutions Architect analysed potential solutions and evaluated market services for compatibility with their existing case management system.

The team has decided to extend the discovery phase by two weeks. This will provide time to dive deeper into their data analysis, and create empathy maps and logical decision flows to streamline the prescribing process.

October 2023

The project team recently delivered their concluding Show and Tell. They would like to thank everyone for the valuable feedback they received throughout the process.

Lastly, they would like to send a big shout-out to the discovery project team for their dedication and hard work in developing the discovery to where it is today.