Social Care involves interaction with the individuals we support – often this means visiting people in their own homes, anywhere within the county.  We also have a number of offices at various locations in the county, so it makes sense to work from the nearest convenient office rather than one particular desk in a specific office.

For some time, Social Care has trialled “Wise Working” – using laptops instead of fixed PC’s, and using RAG (remote access gateway) to enable staff to work from anywhere with internet access and still connect to our networked systems.  This means less travel time, being able to work from home where this makes sense, being able to get more done in between meetings.

Wise Working has now developed to be part of a wider Modernisation Programme for Conwy. With our colleagues in IT and other departments, we’re rolling out the concept to all staff.

By becoming more mobile, we’re maximising our office space and freeing up meeting rooms. Supporting flexible working for staff helps to maximise the use of our time.  The rollout also includes decluttering, issuing new larger screens for all staff, replacing laptops and PC’s over 5 years old, and improving the visibility and accessibility of senior management.

The PARIS system is used to store records and information about the people who use the services provided by Conwy’s social services department. The team responsible for PARIS successfully delivered an upgrade to the software in February 2015.

The upgrade ended a long period of testing, making sure that important functionality was working and fit for purpose.

The upgrade to PARIS was a big change from the version that was already in use, and it took a lot of effort to ensure that the roll out of the new version did not disrupt the delivery of services to the public.

For the staff who use PARIS, the upgrade brings a completely new look to the system, making it easier and quicker for staff to use. It gives the PARIS team access to new system tools that we will use to improve the quality of system development.

The upgrade also enables us to share information with other systems in Social Services, such as CallConfirmLive! This means we will save time in having to pass information between staff working in different areas of the department, and even be able to send information such as work rotas directly and securely to staff’s work mobiles.

Community Support Workers work with individuals in their own homes supporting them with daily tasks such as personal care, meal preparation and management of medication.  Previously, the allocation of work would be coordinated on one paper-based system, and paper timesheets would be submitted for payroll and service user billing.

CallConfirmLive! is a modern system that uses smart phone technology to provide Community Support Workers with real-time information ensuring that they are fully informed of all their day’s visits and any changes that may be needed. It includes a Family Portal enabling clients and their families the ability to see their own individual visit. It also supports managers as they are able to optimise workers time and minimise unnecessary traveling across the authority.  It supports health and safety with a system of alerts notifying the office of the non-arrival or departure of a support worker at a scheduled call and the system will produce an electronic file for payroll without any need for filling in paper timesheets.

CallConfirmLive! is in the process of being implemented and is expected to be fully functional by the end of 2016.