How Cygnum supports the delivery of Shared Lives in Caerphilly

Caerphilly leads a Shared Lives scheme of eight local authorities in Wales. Discover how it uses Cygnum to support adult care

Shared Lives is a form of community support for adults referred to Caerphilly by social services or the local health board. Caerphilly leads a Shared Lives partnership of eight, comprising six other local authorities and two health boards.  

It records carers from the community to support adults (over 18) with care and support needs. All care takes place in the carer’s home for a set period of time which is variable by carer. It ranges from daytime care, which might mean a couple of hours during which the person with support needs visits the carer’s home, through to one arrangement in Caerphilly where the carer has been providing full time support for 40 years. Shared Lives relies upon the commitment of ordinary people from withing the community who are trained, assessed and approved by the scheme to provide care to those who need it. 

“We support, monitor and train every carer,” explains Martin Thomas, Shared Lives Business manager at Caerphilly County Borough Council. “We then deal with referrals that are made to us and match people with appropriate carers.” 

How Shared Lives operated before

Prior to going live with Cygnum in 2024, Caerphilly’s Shared Lives scheme used a system that was designed for it at its inception in 2011. It had been using the system since 2012. “It was a standalone, bespoke system,” says Martin. “It served us well over the years but there was no scope to develop it. It had been designed and built by a freelancer who had moved on, and Caerphilly’s IT team didn’t want to touch it. They system started to fail, which prompted us to look at other options.” 

Why Cygnum? 

“We needed the flexibility of a system that could expand with us,” explains Martin. “For example, if new local authorities join us in future, we need to be able to integrate them quickly. Cygnum offered that flexibility and I can alter so much in the system myself, such as fee levels, local authorities joining or leaving and the people who come and go grom the scheme. 

“It was also important to me that we could become autonomous in our system usage and not reliant on outside help to set things up and function. With Cygnum, we can make the changes we need without assistance from the team at CACI.”  

How the Shared Lives team got up and running with Cygnum 

As part of onboarding, CACI provides project management, training, go-live and ongoing support with Cygnum. “The whole end-to-end process was good, from initial conversations through to the design and build that we needed” says Martin. “Samppa and the rest of the CACI team captured our needs really well in the full delivery of Cygnum. I had a very clear view in my mind of what I wanted and CACI captured that. We’re a bespoke service and the system suits our needs. It can be complicated, but it works and CACI adapted the system for us.” 

One area that always causes concern when switching to a new system is change. Change management is a vital step in any project. Effective training is a central component of this. “The training, led by Odette, was excellent,” says Martin. “It was intense, but it made it easy for us to get started with Cygnum.  

“This meant that we could manage to the transition from the old system to Cygnum well. With each step, it enabled us to develop a strong working relationship with CACI, too.” 

The final stage was to go live with Cygnum. “After testing and training, we were ready,” explains Martin. “Our in-house go-live saw our team of 32 start using Cygnum. I was a bit nervous because I was expecting some reluctance to it all, but everyone has taken to it better than I had hoped. We rolled out delivery so that some of us were using it first and getting things set up, but this meant we ended up rolling it out to a team who were immediately comfortable with Cygnum.” 

The role of Cygnum in Caerphilly’s Shared Lives scheme

“Carers are set up on Cygnum and we can easily access what sort of care they can provide, for example if it’s respite, shorter term care, or long-term care where someone will move in with them,” explains Martin. “Similarly with referrals, we can get them into the system and understand their needs quickly. Our team can use the wallchart in Cygnum to see who can provide what and match them to the people who are referred to us. It makes it easy for us to add people, both carers and referrals, and understand their needs and availability. We can then understand the needs of the person being referred and the availability, skills and training of the carers in the system. 

“As part of a more gradual roll out, we will be increasing the functionality available to the team as we go. To start with, however, Cygnum has delivered the essentials that we need; managing caseloads, managing referrals and ensuring that carers are paid on time. To that end, Cygnum has delivered exactly what we needed and I’m excited to roll out more functionality as we go.” 

What’s next for Cygnum and Shared Lives?

As Martin and the team expand upon the early success of their use of Cygnum, it will deliver increased efficiency and time savings as they go. “I’m excited to build upon our use of the system,” he says. “We will be able to use it for things such as DBS record checks, contacts database and reporting. 

Conclusion

“Working with CACI has been a real pleasure,” concludes Martin. “The project ran as smoothly as I could’ve hoped and, essentially for us, it ran on time and on budget. The communication from CACI was good throughout. 

“I’m excited that Cygnum gives us the opportunity to deliver our Shared Lives services to our communities in the way we need.”