Overview

The growing demand for social work services experienced by Trafford Council led to sustained increases in the need to conduct assessments across both children’s and adults’ social care teams.

In a bid to cope with increasing numbers of assessments and improve efficiencies, the Council decided to implement the Liquidlogic Windows mobile app.

How was it Done?

Mobile working was initially rolled out to the Adult Social Care Team in Hospitals and Communities. These teams had previously conducted paper-based assessments and were accustomed to returning to the Council’s offices to input information from the assessment into the Liquidlogic Adults’ Social Care System (LAS).

Speaking about the rollout, Ridhwaan Hafezji, IT Programme Lead at Trafford Council comments: “The objective to introducing tablets was to provide social workers with the tools to give them flexibility. We wanted users to feel empowered and be able to plan workload accordingly. Since introducing mobile working we have seen many benefits; these include greater efficiencies because users spend less time commuting back to the office and there is now no need to ‘type up’ assessments that were previously handwritten and recorded electronically later in the day.”

Trafford Council rolled out Lenovo Yoga devices to 350 users across the Borough. Users are able to fold the device’s screen 360 degrees to use as a tablet with touchscreen functionality and stylus.

Four months later and following the success of mobile working within the Adult Social Care Team, the same approach was taken with the Children’s Social Care Team for both LCS and EHM.

Diane Eaton, Corporate Director of Adult Services & Project Sponsor comments: “The Liquidlogic Mobile App has brought many benefits in a relatively short amount of time. Trafford Council is equipping staff with what they need in order to do their job efficiently and supporting smarter working. We are delighted with this new way of working.”

Unexpected Benefits

Ridhwaan Hafezji goes on to say: “Although mobile working was not rolled out specifically to make efficiency savings, it has been clear that the Council has benefitted from the use of tablets. In addition to this, the Council has experienced benefits from a security perspective – all devices are encrypted and therefore significantly safer than a paper-based system for obvious reasons.”

Training

The shift in working approach has been significant for some teams – in particular those in the Adult Social Care Team who were accustomed to working on a desktop PC in the office.

The training programme at Trafford Council was considered carefully and designed to instil a level of confidence in all users. Training was delivered over a 3-hour period and each user had to be trained before being issued with a mobile device. Approximately 50% of this time was dedicated to training on the Liquidlogic app and the remainder on the device itself. Users were taught how to conduct assessments using specific scenarios and sync the device.

Following the 3-hour training session, ‘super users’ were involved in floor walking to support users who had queries about syncing the app to the Liquidlogic case management system.

Speaking about user reaction to the introduction of mobile working Ridhwaan Hafezji says: “People were genuinely positive and could see the benefits that mobile working could bring to their role. Culturally there has been a change from all levels within the Council.”

Benefits

• Supports flexible working
• Saves time and creates efficiencies
• Provides autonomy to staff
• Improved security
• Encourages a consistent approach is taken

Download the pdf version of the Liquidlogic Trafford Mobile App.

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