Bracknell Forest Council frees up emergency services team to focus on complex cases
Bracknell Forest Council (BFS) serves a population of over 125,000, growing faster than England’s average. Its digital team is focused on delivering better, more accessible services to all citizens across the Council, including its out-of-hours handling service.
Serving almost a million residents, the Berkshire Emergency Duty Service (EDS) team responds to crisis welfare and safety situations when everyone else has gone home. To support this hardworking team, BFC needed a holistic solution with a person-based view to handle multiple case types with specific workflows. The solution also needed to keep data secure while replacing manual processes to reduce errors and offer effective reporting.
Moving away from a case-based siloed system, the EDS solution would need to offer more automated self-service, helping release the team from routine admin tasks so they could focus their energies where needed most.
EDS is the Berkshire out-of-hours service and the primary contact for the public and professionals with concerns about a child or vulnerable adult’s welfare and safety outside regular office hours. It’s also an out-of-hours Appropriate Adult Service responding to vulnerable adults, children and young people in police custody. When everyone has gone home, these professionally qualified social workers work under pressure in a fast-paced emergency service. Dealing with people in distress, they support the homeless, children who need protection and those having a mental health crisis. Cases are time-consuming, emotional and complex. Each situation must be carefully assessed, a solution recommended and/or a referral made.
Digital transformation within councils is continuous and multi-faceted. As with the EDS service, the BFC digital team considers each stakeholder and need within a service, meeting requirements for:
They turned to Citizen Hub, Liberty Create, our low-code platform and Liberty Converse, our omnichannel contact centre, to meet these challenges.
“Providing easily manageable systems for our residents to access our services is our priority. As with all technology, advances in this area are constant and we are working to ensure our systems are providing the latest capabilities.”
John Harrison
Executive Member for Culture, Delivery and Public Protection, Bracknell Forest Council
The EDS solution delivers on BFC’s needs for resilience and scalability. Meeting security needs is bolstered by its adaptability — so the BFC digital team can prevent resource pinch points and make changes themselves in an agile way to meet staff and customer needs. This technical independence gives the Council the power to upskill staff easily.
The team can update screening questions easily to ensure consistent and accurate information gathering in forms and remove the need for manual workarounds. The solution also complies with current GDPR data protection regulations and can be updated as legislation changes.
“Providing easily manageable systems for our residents to access our services is our priority.”
John Harrison
Executive Member for Culture, Delivery and Public Protection, Bracknell Forest Council
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