Whilst the operations of education and youth justice practitioners run separate from one another, there are areas of overlap. In these areas, information sharing and working from the same record can be beneficial to both parties. Ultimately, it is also beneficial to the young people involved. A shared understanding via a single view of each young person can help in both intervention and improving outcomes for vulnerable young people.

Common understanding over crucial matters is a prerequisite. For example, where children are arrested, their school must be informed. This means that schools need to be able to send and receive information to and from the police and youth justice workers.

Whilst that might be an extreme example, it does of course happen. The sharing of information is the crucial aspect here, though. How far can this be extended to improve outcomes for children? Such examples highlight that information sharing is possible.

Attendance records

With every child required to attend school, their attendance data is instructive, not only to their school and parents/carers, but where applicable, social and youth justice workers too. Where a young person who is in the youth justice system misses school, it is imperative that this information is shared with their youth justice team.

Children missing school is an obvious red flag to youth justice and social workers. Mandatory reporting on the attendance of looked after children is already in place, further reporting on children known to other external agencies can help them greatly.

Sharing information and data is a key area in preventing children and young people from falling through the cracks.

How can shared data help in a multi-agency scenario?

There are various estimates as to the number of children missing education. This depends upon the parameters set and the threshold of days missed. NCB estimates that the number is just shy of 50,000. This number is for children who are not registered at a school and are not receiving appropriate home schooling.

Running parallel to this is the estimate that some 50,000 children are involved in county lines drug dealing activities. Of course, not every child missing education is going to be involved in such activities, but the numbers bear a striking similarity. If children aren’t at school, what are they doing? Perhaps more pertinently, under the auspices of which agency do they fall?

When children fall into the youth justice sector, an understanding of their school attendance record can be insightful in painting a picture of their journey. Non-attendance gives some strong clues as to what they may have been doing. Establishing this data link with education can help youth justice teams and workers greatly.

Similarly, when a child moves school, it is beneficial that their new school has a clear record of them. If they have been involved with youth justice workers, it can help in understanding their background and their requirements. Similarly, where health concerns are prevalent, it’s important that the school has oversight of such information.

A single view of the child

This is a topic we’ve explored in our recent white paper. “At present we are seeing far too many examples of children not receiving the care they need because of a disjointed service and system response. Teachers, care and social workers, police, parents, local authority professionals and youth justice workers – even doctors and health professionals – are all stretched; piecing together a young person’s story from disparate information points makes an already challenging task even more so. Information on a young person is too often siloed and inaccessible.”

The information held by one agency is often valuable to another. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so creating efficiency and a more joined-up response to the needs of vulnerable young people makes a great deal of sense.

This can be achieved with a single view of the child. If there’s a consistent record that can be accessed and added to by multiple agencies, it makes it far easier for disparate parts of the system response to work efficiently and effectively.

Conclusion

There are demonstrably strong ties between the work done in agencies such as schools and youth justice teams. Linking that work together, where necessary and appropriate, can help to improve outcomes for the children and young people in their services. It can further support the work of other professionals and agencies involved in a young person’s journey, too.

The technology exists today to help make a difference; to help join the dots in a journey. This helps to remove duplication of effort, guesswork and assumptions. If all parties can work around a single source of the truth, it makes understanding a young person’s journey and interpreting their story much easier. Bridging these gaps in understanding at schools and in youth justice teams can further help to tackle the complexity in each story. Having a basic understanding of their journey is so important in shaping their future.

This is a topic that we explored in our recent white paper, Single view of a child. You can download your free copy here.

Early Years funding is essential in providing the best possible outcomes to children from the outset of their educational journey. Funding depends on several factors. The rules themselves, too, are undergoing change. From eligibility to age of the child and the number of hours funded, local authorities need a system in place that can be agile to these changes. Failure to respond to Early Years funding changes can have a negative impact on children and their families. It is essential to be adaptable in the face of changing rules. 

How does Early Years funding work? 

Early Years funding is based on eligibility criteria. In September 2024, a new 15 hour working parent entitlement was introduced. This saw the expansion of funding extend down to nine-month-olds. In September 2025, the entitlement will be increasing to 30 hours.  

This requires a re-working of the funding section of the software and systems utilised by local authorities in managing their Early Years funding. If the systems used can’t adapt to the changes, then it will necessitate a manual way of working out the rules and matching them to eligibility. This will further require manual effort in working out what is due to each provider. 

Having a system in place that can work out who is owed what is important for accurate billing and payments. This includes clawbacks from providers where children have moved nursery. Without a system to support the process, human error becomes an increasingly viable factor, as do elements such as falsified and inaccurate claims.  

With the rules in something of a state of flux at present, being agile to changes is vital. 

How can technology support Early Years funding? 

Technology can make the entire process of Early Years funding more accurate, easier for providers and easier for local authorities. Providers are required to submit headcounts to get funding from the local authority. Where local authorities can set providers up on a provider portal, it makes the process of submitting estimates, headcounts and amendments seamless for providers. It further makes the process easier for local authorities to track and manage. 

This also makes it easier for the local authority to see what each provider is owed, as estimate payments are worked out, based on their bespoke percentage rules. When the providers then submit actuals through the portal, the local authority can immediately see what the outstanding balance is for each provider and settle it. 

When rules change, your technology system should also be able to incorporate the new rules in a timely manner. This will result in a frictionless transition in your Early Years funding process. 

How Impulse Nexus helps local authorities with their Early Years funding 

We’ve designed Impulse Nexus to be responsive to rule changes, from funding periods to the age of children eligible. It is designed to make managing the end-to-end process easy. Impulse Nexus includes: 

• A providers’ portal through which they can submit estimates, actuals, headcounts and amendments 
• A live register of children at each provider 
• A banner to display which submission window is open, the status and how many days are remaining 
• A display of how many hours each child is claiming  
• Flags to indicate what each child is eligible for 
• The ability to bulk edit children’s hours 
• The provider can see a history of all submissions and how much was paid per child 
• The ability to reduce administrative time for your Early Years team 
• A full audit trail of submissions, payment rates and rejections 
• The ability to set your own funding periods, submission dates and rates 
• The ability to set up stretched funding models 
• Validation errors displayed in real time, with reasoning 
• Management area for local authorities to view and approve checks, validate the cross provider children, and children that haven’t yet been matched to a core record  
• The ability to customise funding types for legislation changes and regional requirements 

Ultimately, Impulse Nexus provides you with a clear and consistent process in line with your local authority’s bespoke rules. We understand that each local authority has different rules and processes in place, so being able to implement your process is important. It’s also crucial to have a system in place that can be adapted to changes in legislation.  

For more information, please visit our website. 

Every child in the education and youth justice systems has their own, unique story. How can this story be accessed, understood and interpreted by the various agencies that they come into contact with? A single view of each child, which is accessible to the multiple agencies, helps to form a consistent thread of knowledge and understanding. This can be used to provide not only the best available care to each child, but to improve efficiency across the services they interact with.

There are several examples where different agencies require the same, or similar, information. Teachers, care and social workers, police, parents, local authority professionals and youth justice workers – even doctors and health professionals – are all stretched; piecing together a young person’s story from disparate information points makes an already challenging task even more so. Information on a young person is too often siloed and inaccessible.

Creating a single view carries many benefits for both children and professionals. This blog explores the benefits of a single view of a child. This is not to say a single system response – different technology works for different agencies. We explored how interoperability between systems will benefit children in a previous blog.This blog sets out to explore the benefit of achieving this single view.

Improved efficiency and cohesion

With resources stretched, efficiency gains are vital in being able to provide improved outcomes to more children. Where personnel and agencies change, a single view is vital in them being able to hit the ground running. Where information is inaccessible and difficult to interpret, it can result in the same questions being asked and the same ground being covered.

Make it easy for new practitioners

Turnover of staff is inevitable. Making it easy for new personnel is imperative. Not only does it create efficiency, but it makes their job much, much easier. Starting from scratch with any child or young person is a challenging phase, with the need to build understanding and trust with them, particularly in a youth justice and social care setting. If new practitioners to a child’s journey can access and interpret their story to date, it helps them to understand the child, which helps them to take proactive steps immediately towards improving their outcomes.

Improve understanding of each child

There is so much that plays into each child’s journey, and so much information that is relevant to it. From school attendance data to police and healthcare records, it is a constantly moving and evolving journey. A simple oversight of the agencies involved is instructive; what care have they received and from whom? This helps to not only understand each child individually, but to implement data mapping which forms a more holistic understanding of children in similar scenarios and what is the best way to help them.

Linking disparate responses

Each agency has information that is relevant to them and only them. Where the single view is beneficial is in areas of overlapping responses. For example, schools need to know if a pupil has been arrested. Similarly, if a child is diagnosed with SEND, that information is relevant to their entire educational journey. It is also useful information for youth justice workers in understanding young people in their services. A sharing of such information is vital in the multi-agency response to such children. If this information becomes siloed, it will hamper the response of other agencies to a young person.

Timely, accurate information

Once information is known, recording and sharing it with other agencies in a timely manner is crucial. Again, the single view is crucial, since it enables other agencies to access such relevant information against a child as soon as it is available. Accessing such information can help agency to tailor their response to a child as and when they need to interact with them.

Conclusion

The single view can be achieved in different ways, but it works to the same outcome: the improved outcomes of children and young people interacting with various agencies.

Where professionals can record their information, it is vital that it doesn’t become siloed. The sharing of relevant information with other agencies will fundamentally help them in achieving the goals they themselves set out to achieve. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so it makes sense to support this with appropriate data sharing to enhance understanding of children and young people to improve their outcomes.

This is a topic that we have explore more comprehensively in our recent white paper, which you can download for free here.

In cases around vulnerable children, we repeatedly see how many different agencies and professionals are involved in their story. For a young person in the youth justice system, there are several agencies all attempting to intervene to improve their outcomes; youth justice teams, police, social workers, their school, parents and health workers. With so many agencies potentially in play, how can a clear and consistent thread of information be created on each young person for the betterment of their journey?

A single view of the child for youth justice workers

Having access to a single thread of information, a single source of the truth, is vital. It helps to remove duplication of effort not only for each agency, but for the young person, too. With multifarious agencies turning up on a carousel of touchpoints along the journey, many covering the same ground, it erodes trust in the services that are in situ to help them.

It can be challenging enough within a single agency. Youth justice teams are stretched. Human relationships don’t work to a set plan, so changes in personnel across a young person’s journey are inevitable. How can a practitioner who is new to a young person’s case understand and interpret their story without needing to repeat previously asked questions?

A central database of activities, touchpoints and notes is essential. A single thread of information makes it easier for information to be looked at and understood. If notes are siloed into individual practitioners, for example if they are recorded only via pen and paper, then it makes it incredibly difficult for others to pick up the pieces when they need to.

If interoperability between practitioners within the same agency is impossible, then how can this information be shared effectively with other agencies?

Achieving interoperability for the benefit of youth justice work

Interoperability starts within a single agency, in the way in which information is recorded, shared and understood within it. Interoperability then needs to extend to multi-agency scenarios.

The several touchpoints in the journey of a young person within the youth justice sector demonstrate this. How can the police effectively share information with the other agencies involved? How can youth justice teams make their information available to the other agencies? By creating a mutual base of understanding around each vulnerable young person.

Understanding is essential to improving outcomes. We also see the affect of things such as trauma in a young person’s story. How can their story and circumstances be interpreted in improving their outcomes? These often intangible aspects can go undetected – having a consistent base of information can help in identifying them. There’s no one size fits all solution to dealing with youth offending, so being able to interpret and understand their journey from a comprehensive base of information is crucial.

A single source of information is to the benefit of everyone; the young person, their family and the agencies involved in their journey. But how can this be achieved?

Technology response to interoperability

The underlying system of recording information is fundamental in achieving this. In the same way that there is no one size fits all approach to improving outcomes for vulnerable young people, there is no one size fits all technology system for the agencies involved in their journey.

It is inevitable that different agencies will deploy different technology. Information and security will be different for each, as will the method of recording of information. But how can the relevant information within each agency be made available for wider use by external agencies which are seeking the same outcomes?

Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so it makes sense to share information and valuable insight. Each agency needs to understand the intervention points of the others.

Conclusion

Every touchpoint recorded with a young person in the youth justice sector is relevant to their journey. It forms part of the system response to them and their case. Having a holistic view of these touchpoints is vital for youth justice teams and workers in interpreting their story and intervening appropriately to help improve their outcomes.

Creating a single view of each child helps each agency to better contribute to their journey. Interoperability of systems is essential in achieving this. Using software that facilitates interaction and data sharing with other agencies utilising different software will facilitate this.

Where information gets siloed, it essentially gets lost. It sits within an agency in isolation, useless to the other touchpoints a vulnerable young person will have with other agencies. Bringing this information together not only creates understanding around a young person’s journey, it also creates efficiency in the process for the agencies involved.

If everyone can record on and interact with a single source of the truth, it will help every agency and youth justice worker to understand and interpret the journey of the young person.

Creating a single view of the child is a topic CACI has explored in a recent white paper, which you can download for free here.

Person-centred plans help you to unlock the potential of your care services in delivering the best possible outcomes for each of your clients. No two recipients of your services are the same. They require different medication, different services, get on with different people and interact differently with you. This poses a challenge to your services, since there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Deploying the best care management software can help you in delivering digital care plans and digital care planning that puts your clients first and keeps them informed of their care journey. Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Digital care plans

Moving away from paper records and manual ways of planning carries numerous benefits. By creating digital care plans, you can more easily access information, edit it and share it.

Easy access to digital care plans enables you to report on them internally to better understand patterns in your services. You can then identify what works and what doesn’t. Does a client have a better relationship with one of your care workers than any other, for example? You can then consider such factors when scheduling your care workers.

One thing the CQC looks for during inspections is the role your clients play in their own care. Maintaining digital care plans makes it easier for them to input into their own care and understand their options, including for aspects such as end of life care.

The ability to share your data on clients is also a factor considered by the CQC. Being able to share aspects of your services, such as digital care plans, demonstrates that you can support your clients in their interactions with other services. For example, if they decided to join your services from somewhere else, being able to import and understand their data will help you in providing the best possible care from the very beginning.

Putting clients in control is important. The best care management software will help you by providing a portal through which clients and their loved ones can interact with their digital care plans and your services.

Digital care planning

Digital care planning puts both you and your clients in greater control of the care journey. Feeding your digital care planning into a friends and family portal puts an arm around your clients and their loved ones. Offering such transparency of your services, past, present and future, is impossible with paper records stored in an office.

Clear communication with your care workers is another vital step in delivering outstanding person-centred care to your clients. The best care management software can support your digital care planning with a mobile app. Through this, you can make your digital care plans visible to care workers as and when they need them. At each visit, you can provide clear instructions as to expected time of visit, access and medication required to be administered.

As your care workers work through their visits, they can record outcomes as they go. With real-time visit information available to you, you can then update the client’s portal accordingly, reassuring their loved ones that visits have happened.

Complete digital care planning in this way, from initial plan creation to scheduling care workers to recording visit outcomes, provides you with a complete audit trail of your services. This will make life easier when it comes to CQC inspections, for example. You will be in a strong position to simply make your digital care planning available to inspectors as part of their inspection.

How the best care management software can help you

By having all your data in one place, it makes access and transparency more straightforward. Who did what, where and when? The best care management software will enable easy interrogation of your digital care planning.

It should also be flexible to yours and your clients’ needs. No two clients are the same, nor are two care services. Being able to implement the digital care plans that you and your clients need is imperative in any outstanding care service.

Digital care plans are just one facet of how the best care management software will assist your services. Digital care planning, however, is one of the most important since it outlines how you deliver care to your clients. Ease and transparency are essential. Your software should support this.

We’ve written a free to download white paper outlining the top seven features that the best care management software should provide. From digital care plans to financial management, it should underpin your outstanding services.

Why not take a look? It’s free to download here.

Person-centred care planning and delivery is the backbone of any outstanding care service. It’s something that the CQC actively looks for when conducting inspections, a hallmark of quality care services. From planning and delivering to putting your clients in control of the care they receive, how can you best deliver person-centred care? Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Person-centred care starts with the person

It’s obvious to point out, but the best way of delivering person-centred care is by involving them. Understanding each client’s medical and care needs is one thing, but how involved are they in the process of the care they receive?

A central record for each client is essential. A care management system can support you in this by providing an easy to create and easy to edit record for every client. When they enter your service, being able to understand their medical record and the exact care they need collaboratively with them is imperative. You can then provide this information to your care workers ahead of and during visits, ensuring that the right care is administered at the right time.

But people’s needs evolve over time. From new prescriptions to changes in preferences, keeping the care you provide to each client up to date is vital. It is also important to be able to share their data with third parties and other providers for any care they receive outside of your services. A care management system can support you in easily and securely sharing relevant data in line with data protection regulations.

The needs and desires of your clients may also change over time. In a lot of care settings, aspects such as end of life often need to be considered. Putting your clients in control of this process is essential. Every client deserves a bespoke care plan and the dignity and respect to make their own decisions.

Involve their loved ones in their person-centred care

In a lot of cases, your clients will have loved ones who are actively interested in the care you provide to them. Reassuring them of upcoming and completed visits, the activities and tasks undertaken, as well as any actions to be taken, is a great way of involving them and evidencing how person-centred you are being.

This can be achieved through the provision of a friends and family portal. Your care management software should support you in establishing this, making simple, secure logins available to authorised users to access a client’s care plan. This is also a great way of getting feedback from your clients on the services they are receiving from you.

Users logging on to the portal can see upcoming and completed visits and obtain information such as medication administered and to be administered. A portal is also a great way of receiving input from family members too, where small details or observations around tweaking your care planning can prove really transformative for the person you support.

Understanding clients’ preferences

A simple way of going above and beyond in providing person-centred care to your clients is to understand their preferences. The CQC notes that these should be recorded once and shared with relevant stakeholders across your care service to avoid duplication of questions with clients.

This helps to add a human touch to their care. If, for example, you have someone who owns cats, this could be something that could be discussed with them during their visits.

Also, if they have upcoming life events, such as a birthday, prompting this information to your care workers means that it’s easy for them to mention and take into consideration. Understanding your clients and sharing this type of understanding with your care workers can deliver excellent outcomes.

Your care management software can help you with the provision of a mobile app for your care workers. They can access visit information and see details such as birthdays and interests in the app as they go about their visits.

Continuity of care is another important means of providing person-centred care. Clients will naturally establish relationships with certain care workers. By rostering care workers consistently to clients, you can provide this continuity.

Again, your care management software should help with this. Making rostering easier, technology can suggest ‘best fit’ allocations of care workers to care plans, considering not only relevant skills and experience, but also factors such as them having a positive relationship with a care worker.

Conclusion

There are several factors that play directly into providing outstanding person-centred care. From understanding the client and their medical needs, to sharing this information with your care workers and rostering the right staff to the right clients, person-centred care requires research, effort and consistency.

Care management software can underpin this process. Creating a central record of each client makes understanding them and their bespoke needs easier. Equally, a central record of each care worker facilitates smoother alignment of your care plans and your staff rosters.

It’s one thing providing person-centred care, and another evidencing it. When CQC inspections inevitably come around, being able to display your care planning, rosters, client visit history and records of communication, you can more easily demonstrate to external stakeholders that your care service puts its clients first.

Every client deserves their own bespoke care plan. Every client deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Ensuring this happens can be easier than you might think.

We’ve covered this and more in our latest white paper which outlines the top seven features the best care management software should provide to you. It’s free to download, so why not take a look?

There are several issues at the forefront of the minds of those involved in the care industry right now. From managing CQC inspections to coping with increasing vacancies in the sector, there are several key issues to traverse. Throw in data security and the need to digitise care records and it can appear an overwhelming to do list. Alongside evolving concerns, however, are evolving solutions. There is an increasingly prevalent role being played by care management technology in the care sector. We wanted to round up a few key issues from the 2024 Care Show and look at how they can be addressed. 

CQC inspections 

Finding a popular regulator in any industry is difficult, but there’s a widespread challenge across the care sector in understanding the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) single assessment framework (SAF).  

The outbreak of the global Covid pandemic saw a shift to a risk-based approach. The number of completed CQC inspections is yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. This has left some care providers with a rating of ‘requires improvement’ hanging over them for a number of years. This has a knock-on effect on client confidence and the wider business. 

When it comes to inspections, it was clear across the Care Show that there’s dissatisfaction and misunderstanding of the SAF, too.  

How can care management technology help? 

Whilst care management technology can do nothing to alter the rate of inspections, it can help care providers get into position for them. If all your care plans, records and outcomes are recorded in a central system, it makes the process of presenting evidence to the CQC much easier. 

When it comes to answering specific questions, having all the information easily available reduces the effort in answering them. 

Digitising social care 

“70% of providers have digital social care records. This is expected to reach 80% by March 2025,” says Peter Skinner, programme director, digitising social care at the NHS.  

Technology is accepted as having a crucial role for care providers and their clients. More links need to be established between care providers and the NHS. Care management technology is a key enabler in getting people back into a residential setting following hospital visits. It’s also a key enabler in equipping NHS staff with the right information and context on a client when they have to visit hospital. 

The NHS has built standard data capture, the market now needs to understand how it can be used. It’s a two-way journey: admissions info for NHS staff and discharge info back to providers. Joining these up will create efficiencies and a better process for people receiving care. The standardised data set exists at a national level, making it easy to access for everyone with a single access point. 

It’s important to maintain standards for providers accessing technology. The NHS is driving interoperability and providers needs to understand what they’re buying. 

How can care management technology help? 

This is an obvious area in which care management technology is imperative. Maintaining paper records is inefficient and risks vital information going missing. Being able to share the digital information captured with stakeholders quickly and accurately improves care quality. Failing to act on the point of digitising care planning and records will see providers left behind.  

If you’re still working manually, it’s time to speak to a care management software provider. Equally as important, you also need to understand what you’re buying and the impact it will have on your business. 

Cyber security 

This is perhaps another obvious area for technology, but cyber security is a genuine concern in the care industry. The process of caring for people necessitates the handling and processing of sensitive information. Such information is valuable to criminals. So, how can you best protect yourself? 

One of the points raised across the Care Show was the need to continually educate your staff, from administrators to care workers. Your cyber security is only as good as your weakest link. If someone clicks on a malicious link, that can be enough to cause chaos. 

How can care management technology help? 

Partnering with a care management technology provider is an opportunity to gain real peace of mind with your data security. An obvious starting point is to check their security certificates for things like Cyber Essentials and ISO27001. This offers assurance that your care management technology partner is certified to the highest standards. 

There are other factors to consider, such as where your data will be stored. For example, CACI use AWS to store Certa’s data. This helps to leverage Amazon’s significant security expenditure for your data. 

The care workforce 

There is general dismay at the attitude towards and treatment of care workers in the UK. “They are underpaid and underappreciated,” said Karolina Gerlich, CEO of The Care Workers’ Charity. “Recent pay rises of 10p per hour are unacceptable. Care workers are considered low skilled and those arriving from overseas don’t enjoy benefits such as being able to bring their own families with them.” 

There is little surprise that care workers are being easily tempted away by other industries. They get similar or better pay and less stressful working conditions. It’s therefore unsurprising that vacancy rates are so high in the care sector. 

Beyond that, there was discussion at the Care Show around how providers can better support their care workers. It is widely believed that more support is required, in terms of communication and specialisation. This comes back to understanding your workforce. Assigning care workers to areas that they’re really good at and really interested in is an effective way of keeping them engaged. Further focussing training for them on those areas is another positive. 

Training was mentioned as something that needs to go beyond just mandatory refresher training, to courses that expand people’s professional profiles, offering them career development.  

Communication is another vital thread. Considering the impact of new technology on care workers and involving them in the decision making process helps to make them feel appreciated and involved. Bringing them closer to the central team improves connection and the sense of involvement. Ultimately, if you look after your care workers, you reduce your expenditure on recruitment, especially at a time when there are more vacancies than care workers. Having a happy, consistent team of care workers will also ensure the ongoing quality and consistency of care you provide to your client. 

How can care management technology help? 

Care technology can support care workers in several ways. Simple additions to your care management technology such as a care worker app can help to clearly communicate with care workers and enhance lone worker safety.  

It can also help you in understanding your care workers and their expertise. What do they specialise in? What are they good at? Which clients do they get on with? How can you make their day efficient and effective? How can you ensure they have all the information they need for each visit? 

Care management technology can support this. You can then better roster your care workers and provide appropriate training opportunities. In the same way that no two clients are the same, nor are two care workers. They have different interests and specialities. Providing them with the opportunity to enhance their careers with you will make them more likely to stay. 

The cost of recruitment is only going up and with more vacancies than care workers there is ample opportunity for care workers to explore other opportunities. Simply treating them fairly, involving them and offering training and progression is a great way to go about keeping them. 

Conclusion 

There were several points of interest across the Care Show. If you’re affected or concerned by any of the issues raised here, we’ve designed Certa to help you. Find out more by visiting https://www.caci.co.uk/software/certa/  

One of the suggestions of the recent SEND review was to overhaul EHCPs, something that is being continued under the SEND AP improvement plan.

The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned the SEND Review in 2019. The aim of this review was to explore the challenges faced by children and their families with identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). In March 2022, after much consultation, a green paper was published which puts forward several suggestions as to how the SEND process can be better administered to improve efficiency and, ultimately, improve outcomes for those children and their families. In amongst the plethora of suggestion sits one around EHCPs (education, health and care plans).

Despite delays to parts of the implementation of the recommendations laid out in the SEND green paper, the SEND Alternative Provision Improvement Plan seeks to press on with revised EHCPs; “This will include delivery of digital requirements for EHCP systems to improve experiences for parents, carers and professionals, decrease bureaucracy and improve the ability to monitor the health of the SEND system.”

What does the DfE want to do with EHCPs?

In short, the DfE wants to streamline EHCPs. As things stand, there is a loose outline for EHCPs but the level of detail within them is at local discretion. This has resulted in inconsistencies at local and national levels, leading to inconsistent responses to them. This is particularly acute where professionals work across two localities: getting to grips with two interpretations of EHCPs takes time and increases the manual, administrative burden upon professionals.

As the SEND green paper notes; “There were inconsistences in the structure, length and formatting of EHCP forms, with the samples included in the analysis ranging from a maximum of 40 pages in one local authority to between 8 and 23 in another. The EHCPs produced by the local authorities in the sample would take approximately 50 minutes on average to read aloud to a child. This lack of consistency means that partners who work across multiple local authorities must navigate multiple processes and templates, reducing their capacity to deliver support and adding to their administrative burden… We therefore propose to introduce standardised EHCP templates and processes.”

Sounds sensible, how will it work in practice?

The central hook upon which EHCPs will be hung going forward will be via a template provided by the DfE – a standard EHCP template with supporting processes and guidance is expected in 2025. This will standardise the information captured, simplifying the interpretation of the information within them and making it easier to input appropriately into each child’s journey.

Another rule that the DfE is seeking to implement around EHCPs is that any changes to them will need to be signed off by the parents of the child. Their increased involvement is seen as central to the success of the SEND process going forward.

The fundamental change to the management and administration of EHCPs is that the DfE is looking to fully digitise them. This will make the process much more efficient and transparent, reducing bureaucracy, since each EHCP will have a fully auditable trail of activities and inputs. This will make interpreting each EHCP much quicker, too, since a complete record of professional and parental input will be visible to schools, professionals and parents.

Creating a central record will enable for greater control, ease of access and interpretation of data for everyone concerned. Children with identified SEND necessarily find themselves in a multi-agency scenario, so tying their record together digitally makes interpreting and understanding their journey easier.

This indicates that information sharing regarding identifying SEND beyond the boundaries of administering education support and placement is vital. For example, youth justice practitioners often identify unmet needs and have contextual and relationship information to contribute to a complete view of the child. Having rich information from multiple sources to consider in the SEND process is key to formulating practical support for their journey and enabling their future life achievements.

Technology supporting the single view

“We think the case is clear for all SEND services to move to digital systems for EHCPs. Digital systems can deliver better experiences for both families and professionals and enable them to continuously improve their services – focusing staff time on working with families rather than being hampered by partial understandings and disconnected bureaucracy.”

A number of different system and technology solutions exist across the education domain, so there’s no chance of every authority and school deploying the same software. Where the DfE will want the systems to work better for children is regarding consistency and interoperability.

Most systems have potential to support interoperability for a standard set of data fields curated by the DfE and to communicate with any third-party systems to send and receive as well as extract information. Whilst there are always challenges defining best practice categories through suitable consultation this will be vital in achieving earlier intervention and better SEND outcomes through the EHCP process.

Conclusion

A standardised response to EHCPs will make the entire process more accessible and easier to manage. The response to SEND should not depend upon where you live and the process should be transparent and consistent for everyone.

As a longstanding and experienced provider in the education domain, we have long seen the benefit of extended access to information as well as standards for interoperability with third party software. The ability to send and receive data seamlessly creates more accuracy and efficiency in the multi professional collaborative process that will ultimately benefit of children and families with identified SEND.

Creating a rich, single view of every child can only be beneficial in collating data for understanding behaviours and tracking responses. We too often see information, systems and processes and practitioners siloed and struggling to tackle the challenge of improving outcomes for the diverse needs of all children. So, this intervention from the DfE is welcome and so as a supplier we will be proactive in supporting this.

About Impulse Nexus 

Impulse Nexus is a modular education information management system that supports councils and local authorities in delivering education services. Impulse Nexus can be used to support some or all of an authority’s education services. Portal functionality enables easy and secure messaging between schools, authorities, parents and professionals involved in a child’s education journey.  

With a transparent and complete record which stays with a child throughout their educational journey, Impulse Nexus helps to join the dots in every child’s education, helping to improve outcomes for everyone. 

Having the ability to automate your competency management process enhances your workforce scheduling, improving output and safety

When assigning staff to tasks and schedules, understanding their core competencies is essential. As a stark and wholly unfair example, in a transport organisation you wouldn’t assign an accountant to drive a train. Nor would you ask a train driver to look over your accounts. Understanding an individual’s skills, training and experience is essential. It’s essential to the smooth running of your services and the safety of your workers and end users. Competency management is central to this.

Running schedules in a live and constantly evolving environment such as transport is difficult. There’s the basic schedule to adhere to. Then there are events, often beyond your control, which can curtail even the best laid plans. Being able to respond to these unforeseen circumstances swiftly and accurately is the difference between minimising service disruption and lengthy delays or cancelations.

This goes beyond transport, too. In construction, for example, if there is an accident on site or work isn’t carried out to the required standard, it can cause delays and impact the cost of the project.

The most reliable way of minimising such incidents is by having the right people in the right place at the right time. Your competency management framework plays a vital role in this. It achieves this not only by ensuring staff are trained, skilled and experienced, but also by being made transparent and available across your organisation. The link between training, assessment and scheduling needs to be seamless. Information must be available in real-time and events responded to accordingly.

What does real-time competency management look like?

Automation is key here. Let’s take the example of a train driver being assessed. Their ongoing competence is paramount to the smooth and safe running of services. Regular assessments need to be scheduled, conducted and reported on.

Driver A is due for their assessment. The assessor needs to be notified of the need to assess them and they will then go about conducting the assessment. Once the assessment is complete, they will then need to record the outcome of it. If Driver A has passed the assessment, this information needs to be made available to the driver, their management team and the scheduling team. In this scenario, it’s a case of confirming business as usual.

But what if Driver A fails to pass their assessment? In this scenario, further training may be required as remedial action to rectify their error. If the assessor notes Driver A as having failed, there needs to be a swift chain reaction to this. Driver A must be notified, their managers too, plus the scheduling team. Driver A may need to be removed from duty until such a time that they have undertaken the requisite training. This means, therefore, that the training team must be notified, too, with a view to booking Driver A in for training asap.

The scheduling team will then need to arrange to have another driver cover any shifts that they are booked in for. This triggers its own chain of communication, impacting another driver and their ongoing shifts. Regulations around working hours must be factored in and adhered to.

Automating this process makes it more efficient. Information, rather than being siloed by department, can be shared electronically at the point of input. This means that the driver, their managers, the scheduling team and the training department can all act quickly.

How do organisations automate their competency management?

This is a process that Transport for London (TfL) operates through CACI’s Cygnum software. Assessors are assigned to a list of tube drivers who need assessing, they can see their routes and timings and meet drivers at a station that best suits them. The results are recorded instantly and follow-up activities are automatically triggered.

Assessors access a priority list of drivers on the go through Cygnum. They can see where drivers are due or coming up for assessment. This means they can prioritise accordingly. Using the Cygnum Mobile app, assessors can record results on the go, in real time.

Obviously mobile reception can be an issue on sections of the London Underground. Where this is the case, results are stored offline on the app to be uploaded as soon as possible once reception is available again.

With results recorded in or near to real time, TfL’s training and scheduling teams have accurate and up to date information available to them. For the training team, their list of drivers is demand driven, so those drivers who need to receive training most are put to the front of the queue. This minimises frontline absences.

Ongoing training can be enhanced via automation too. Regular checks, from safety briefings to eyesight checks need to be conducted and recorded. Sending reminders and auto-booking people onto courses makes for a smoother process.

Network Rail operates its training management programme through Cygnum. This enables Network Rail to automate vast swathes of its training operation. Mandatory courses are booked in advance, attendance is accurately monitored and results are recorded and shared across the organisation.

The automation of this enables Network Rail to not only keep abreast of its training courses and who needs to attend, but also to inform schedulers of their outcomes. This is essential in keeping the right people in the right place at the right time.

Conclusion

Whilst automation of competency management can be incredibly useful across any transport organisation, it is only as reliable as the data entered into your system. Bringing data together from across your organisation is essential. Where data become siloed, its usefulness is stunted. Creating a single view requires the input of every department.

Automation can make the crucial task of keeping the right people in the right place at the right time more straightforward. It can alert you and your staff of required upcoming training. Assessments can be scheduled well in advance with results logged instantly. Training can be booked when it’s needed, including in a demand-led fashion. Again, making the outcomes of sessions available to the wider business instantly facilitates accurate and timely decision making.

Ultimately, automation of competency management underpins accurate scheduling. Assigning tasks to staff safe in the knowledge that they are the right people to perform such tasks is essential in transport. In any industry with moving parts, being able to make changes in a live environment is also essential. When schedulers and administrators have to manually trawl through records to evidence the changes they wish to make, it wastes valuable time. Being able to instantly understand someone’s suitability for a task, against their core competencies, skills, experience and working patterns, saves time and keeps services moving.

Automation is undoubtedly challenging to achieve, but the results are well worth it.

How technology is enhancing safety for rail workers at organisations like Network Rail and Transport for London (TfL)

Whilst the UK is in the enviable position of having one of the safest rail networks in the world, that’s not to say that things couldn’t be improved upon. Technology is playing a major role in advancing safety standards and enhancing safety for the rail network’s workforce and passengers. This case study looks at how Network Rail and Transport for London (TfL) are utilising CACI’s Cygnum software to support their efforts in managing the training and competency of their workforce.

Beyond the immediate safety of the workforce, enhancements in training and competency management serve to reduce overarching risk. Risk takes on many forms in the rail industry. Mistakes can lead to health and safety incidents; they can also result in service disruption and delayed projects. If staff aren’t appropriately trained, mistakes are more likely to occur. If staff aren’t assessed, there’s no knowledge and reporting on frontline delivery.

Capturing data and appropriately acting upon it is vital to a successful training and competency management framework. Being able to schedule training and assessments effectively and efficiently, whilst also being able to capture outcomes in real-time, helps organisations to maintain core competencies across their workforce and provide opportunities for career progression, an expansion in the available pool of skills and also the opportunity for re-training and mandatory ongoing training where necessary.

Training management

Training management takes many guises within an organisation such as Network Rail, which has a workforce of over 48,000 people. From mandatory ongoing training courses to more advanced, career progressing initiatives, Network Rail caters for its workforce with the provision of thousands of courses every year across 11 national training centres.

Running this process efficiently is paramount in achieving the desired training outcomes. Where manual processes are involved in inviting staff to mandatory sessions and checking that they have attended, mistakes inevitably creep in. This can result in staff attending the wrong courses, being sent to the wrong location or not attending.

Implementing a technology system can help to alleviate such issues, with automated checking of course prerequisites, auto-booking of staff to mandatory courses at defined intervals, auto-logging attendance on the day (plus any results that are required) and creating efficiency and consistency across the process. This leaves the more manual aspects to exceptions and more complex arrangements.

Furthermore, a robust training management programme enables organisations to diversify and enhance the range of skills available to them within their existing workforce. If places on courses are free, then they can be offered out to the wider workforce. This improves efficiency by helping to keep courses full. Making best use of available training resources by ensuring that courses are run to capacity and any vacant spaces are offered to interested employees who would benefit from the training opportunity, continuously enhances the core competencies and career opportunities available to your workforce.

Each training course costs money to run, from the trainer, the time taken by the employee and the room and facilities used. Finding a way of maximising the results of this expenditure is crucial. With improved visibility of class utilisation via Cygnum, Network Rail can offer out vacant course places to the wider rail industry, thereby supporting other organisations in their training needs and helping to support the wider safety standards of the rail industry.

Competency management

Closely linked to training is competency management. TfL utilises Cygnum to support the ongoing competency management of its 4,500+ Underground drivers. At a basic level, competency management is ensuring that staff are competent to perform their roles. For example that they are appropriately trained and qualified for the tasks they are undertaking. Beyond that, competency management helps organisations to understand the skills at their disposal across their workforce.

It also ties into training where mandatory ongoing training is required to maintain competence for a role. For train drivers, this includes basic aspects such as eyesight checks. It also establishes the triggering of mandatory training where mistakes have been made out in the field. Similarly to Network Rail, TfL can then schedule training at the point of a result being logged. This ensures that all drivers have access to relevant and necessary training to ensure ongoing competence.

To further have assurance on driver competency, TfL carries out ‘on the job’ staff assessments. These are scheduled by Cygnum automatically based on business rules and the driver’s duty rota. Both the assessor and driver are notified instantly. This reduces the manual effort in arranging assessments, making the process more efficient.

When an assessor assesses a driver, they can capture the outcomes on their mobile device via Cygnum’s mobile app, Cygnum Mobile. Results are uploaded to the Cygnum database and any follow up activities are automatically triggered as a result. Cygnum Mobile also includes offline data capture capability, to mitigate poor mobile reception when operating underground.

Improving workforce safety and reducing risk

By running robust training and competency management programmes, Network Rail and TfL are better positioned to monitor the skills of their workforce and ensure that appropriately trained and competent personnel are operating their services. This further helps them to monitor the safety of their networks by ensuring that all operators are compliant with industry safety standards.

Of course, no system can eradicate human error, but technology can help in prioritising workforce safety whilst at the same time encouraging career progression and the expansion of available skills within the workforce. Where the workforce is trained and regularly assessed, incidents can be kept to a minimum and when they do occur, understanding why is made easier. This is because the competencies, training, skills and experience of those involved can be quickly understood in reporting on incidents.

Having a complete picture of skills, experience and the results of regular assessments also supports administrative and scheduling staff and accurately and fairly assigning tasks to appropriate members of the workforce. Having a central view of core competencies set against bespoke business rules facilitates a degree of automation in scheduling, which reduces manual effort, improves accuracy and makes it easier to handle exceptions. Creating a central view of staff skills enhances workforce safety and reduces risk, since it reduces the likelihood of staff being assigned to tasks to which they’re not suitable for.

For more information on Cygnum, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/m/

CACI is delighted to announce that its Cygnum software will be used by the Environment Agency as a logistics planning tool to schedule its workforce and assets in the preparation of and response to incidents across England ranging from small pollution incidents to widespread flooding. Cygnum will support the Environment Agency in scheduling the 7,000 staff members who have an incident role.

The Environment Agency has around 450 staff on duty 24/7 ready to respond to incidents. These roles cover specific or multiple geographical locations or are nationwide. In the event of larger incidents, the Environment Agency needs to scale up its response, with more people involved and   requiring the movement of people and equipment across the country to support them. The Cygnum solution will be used to plan both the duty roster of the workforce as well as the rostering of specific incidents as they occur. This will include managing the sharing of staff and equipment between teams where necessary.

“We’re delighted that the Environment Agency has chosen our Cygnum solution as its logistics planning tool,” says Ollie Watson, group business development director at CACI. “We have extensive experience in delivering solutions for largescale workforce management requirements and the team is excited to be supporting the Environment Agency in achieving these important outcomes.”

For more information on Cygnum and how it supports businesses, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/

Having the right people in the right place at the right time sounds easy. In largescale transport organisation, effective scheduling is crucial

At the heart of workforce management sits the simple sounding task of scheduling. Your organisation has shifts to fulfil and a pool of workers to fulfil them. Add staff to the rota and away you go. Such shift patterns can be sacrosanct across organisations of any size, providing clarity to workers, management and administrators alike. In largescale transport organisations, however, there are several moving parts to consider and shift patterns can be thrown off course by anything from weather to equipment failure and cancellations in the supply chain.

This blog aims to take a closer look at scheduling in transport organisations. It’s a topic we’ve covered in greater detail in our recent white paper, Tackling workforce management complexities in transport. If you would like to explore the topic in greater detail, you can download a free copy here.

There are myriad tasks that need completing across the transport industry. The complication introduced to the scheduling process often requires a lot of manual work by administrators and schedulers. People fall ill, take holidays and external events can throw a schedule completely off kilter.

Automation in workforce management

Automation of scheduling can greatly reduce the administrative burden. At its most prosaic, automation can simply assign workers to shifts in advance. This can be set out indefinitely, with new workers swapped in for departing/unavailable members of staff easily. Such a process can consider your bespoke business rules and any other factors such as the working time directive and fatigue management.

Where automation can lend a vital hand is in times of strain. We’ve seen examples, notably during the Covid pandemic, of vast swathes of a workforce being absent at once. Where a manual process exists, this resulted in inevitable cancellations of services. With carefully configured automation, it is possible to be more agile in the face of disruption.

Where a worker is absent, having a central system and a central view of your entire workforce enables swift consideration of replacements. This works for smaller examples, too. For example, if a train is delayed and members of crew onboard it are required to meet another service which they will now miss, how can this be handled?

An automated process enables identification of other members of staff who are nearby and can be reassigned, whilst at the same time handling all communications with staff members. The staff who have been delayed can then be reassigned to other tasks, ensuring that their shift isn’t wasted.

Variable demand and moving parts

Another factor to consider in the transport industry is variable demand and moving parts. A high level example of this is the change in train timetables during the Christmas period. Fewer customers means less demand for services, therefore, services can be reduced to ensure more efficient use of the network and staff time.

A more short-term example of this is in shipping. Where a port is expecting a shipment, staff need to be prepared to meet it to initiate the unloading and loading of it. Variation is frequent in such a scenario, since ships can be diverted at a moment’s notice to other ports due to factors such as storms. Another example would be the blockage of the Suez Canal. This can leave a port with a full roster of staff without a function to fulfil. This is a waste of time, money and staffing resources.

Mapping out the changes caused by variable demand in a central system can help to understand its implications. Factors such as cost can be calculated and your response to it can be better informed. Understanding where the risks of variable demand are most likely to occur can help mitigate its impact.

Another example is with revenue protection officers on trains. Understanding the demand for services helps to better utilise them. There’s little point, for example, scheduling ticket inspectors during rush hour to major stations, since moving through the train is all but impossible. Similarly, there are more likely to be barriers at major stations, so working out the best deployment of such staff is more likely to realise the ultimate aim of their work.

Overlaying tasks onto shifts

Establishing a schedule is one thing. Rosters can be worked out well in advance and communicated to staff. But what happens when they show up on the day? Often the set number of employees turn up and discover the specifics of their tasks at that point.

Utilising a workforce management system such as Cygnum helps organisations to understand the specifics of the tasks that need be fulfilled during a shift. This helps organisations to better prepare aspects such as equipment required, time needed to complete the task and where exactly they need to be.

This helps to drive better understanding and efficiency through shifts and tasks. Matching specific skills and experiences to not only shifts, but also tasks, better ensures that the right people are performing the right tasks.

Conclusion

Scheduling can be a complicated and nuanced process, especially across largescale organisations. With several moving parts, variable demand, unpredictable disruptions and the usual ebb and flow of workforce absences, managing the process can be extremely complicated. This can result in inefficiency and poor service delivery.

Introducing automation, clear communication and overlaying tasks onto shifts helps to better understand your workforce the tasks required of them and more accurately assign staff to tasks based on their skills, experience, training, availability and geographic location.

This is a topic that we’ve explored in greater detail in our recent white paper, which you can download freely here. Alternatively, if you would like more information on how Cygnum can help you with your workforce management requirements, please visit our website.

Appeals are an inevitable part of the school admissions process. How can they be effectively and efficiently handled to make the process easy and fair?

Effective and efficient handling of the school admissions process is essential to achieving the goal of a fair and transparent process for all. In this blog, we will look at the appeals process. Appeals are an inevitability. Every admissions authority will have to deal with them every year. In our last blog we looked at oversubscription criteria. They go hand-in-hand with appeals, since they are only required when more applications are received than there are school places available. Evidencing them, and how they’ve been adhered to, is essential to a fair and transparent appeals process.

The central tenets of the appeals process are twofold. Firstly, every parent has the right to appeal a place on behalf of their children. Secondly, the process must be fair and transparent. As we discussed previously, oversubscription criteria must be publicly available and their bespoke ordering by authority laid out.

The appeals process becomes a possibility when the authority rejects a child’s application. In rejecting it, the authority must:

• Make clear the reasons why the application was rejected
• Inform the parent of their right to appeal
• State the deadline for submitting any appeal
• Provide the necessary details to make any appeal
• Inform the parent that they must set out their grounds for appeal

The report for the 2022/23 school year shows that there were 53,086 appeals; 38,186 for secondary school applications and 14,900 for primary schools. This that means that 3.5% of applications are appealed by parents. So, how can the process be handled fairly and transparently?

Efficient processing of appeals in the school admissions process

The School Admissions Code lays out that authorities must establish a panel to hear appeals. Where appeals are heard by a panel, the decision is binding; the school must either admit the child or the application is confirmed as rejected.

In the 2022/23 school year, 19.8% of appeals were successful. This shows that authorities are getting the majority of rejections right. Yet, mistakes do happen.

Technology can play a fundamental role in fair provision and oversight of the admissions process. Where a place has been rejected, for example, because a family resides outside of the catchment area, being able to show the working on this is essential. In a manual process, this means revisiting how the decision was reached. Linking to a geo-mapping application provides robust evidence in an instant.

Other criteria, such as faith, can quickly be evidenced, too. Where a parent hasn’t submitted relevant supporting documentation to evidence their child is of the same faith of the school, the authority can quickly demonstrate that other applications were accepted as a result of this.

Making the process easy for parents is paramount, too. With a parent portal, applications and appeals can be made easily and recorded against the child’s record simultaneously. This further helps with timelines, since any appeals process can be withdrawn after the established date for their submission has passed.

If a panel is convened to hear an appeal, they too can have easy access in one place to the process, the rejection and the grounds for appeal. This helps them to make better informed, fairer decisions.

Conclusion

Nothing can prevent appeals from happening. As the statistics show, they are a prevalent part of the school admission process. Rather, authorities need to be in the best possible position to respond to them.

Where the end-to-end process is handled in a central system, it makes evidence gathering, communications and reaching fair and transparent decisions much more straightforward. Messages and outcomes can be submitted and received via a central portal. This means that parents receive information instantly and can appeal via the same method.

Appeals are to be expected, so being in position to administer them is crucial. They are a central part of the overarching school admissions process. Having a system in place, linked to admissions and oversubscription criteria, helps to make the task of implanting a fair and transparent process much easier for everyone. If the system is simpler for schools and authorities, it will be for parents, too.

The technology exists now to make the admissions process easier to administer, as well as fairer and more transparent for children and their families.

This is a topic that we’ve covered in greater detail, examining the entire admissions process, in our recent white paper, A fair school admissions process for all. You can download a free copy here.

When an admissions authority receives more applications for a school than it has spaces available, it must order the provision of places according to its oversubscription criteria. These rules can be bespoke to each admissions authority. The criteria must be transparent and easy to understand, with a public outlining of the criteria available. So, how can this process be handled fairly and transparently?

Admissions arrangements must be in line with the School Admissions Code. “The purpose of this code is to ensure that all school places for maintained schools and academies are allocated and offered in an open and fair way.” The code has the force of law.

Exceptions to oversubscription criteria

There are exceptions to whom oversubscription criteria do not apply. Children with identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who have an education health and care plan (EHCP) which specifically names a school, must be offered a place.

Once they have been offered a place, the highest priority must then be given to looked after children and previously looked after children.

Having a record of any EHCP or child looked after status in the authority’s system already makes it easy for admissions teams to validate the status of such an application. A joined-up approach is essential for handling applications fairly and transparently. A robust evidence base also makes handling appeals much easier.

Once EHCPs and children looked after have been allocated places, the rest of the applicants must be sorted through. In the easiest case scenario, there will be fewer applications than there are available place and, simply, they must all be offered a place.

Setting out your oversubscription criteria

Every admissions authority must set out its arrangements against which school places are allocated in the event of oversubscription. Each authority can define and order the criteria in their own way. There is no prescribed ordering of criteria, or even which criteria must be included.

The following is an inexhaustive and unindicative list of oversubscription criteria:

• Siblings: It may sound obvious, but the authority must outline its interpretation of the term ‘sibling’. This is to cover step-siblings and adoptions. Linking family records in a central system makes defining and implementing the interpretation straightforward.
• Catchment area: These must be designed by the authority to be reasonable and clearly defined. Linking this to digital mapping solutions can further help define a catchment in a system by considering factors such walking time to a school.
• Feeder schools: These must be nominated by the authority and clearly defined. Linking records in a central system helps determine this, since obtaining current school attended information is easy.
• Social and medical records: Authorities must clearly set out how social and medical records will be used in this context. Enabling parents to submit any records as part of their initial application makes the process easier for everyone.
• Ability or aptitude: Any such requirements must be publicly available. Only grammar schools can base their entire intake based upon this.
• Faith schools: Enabling parents to submit supporting documentation at the point of application makes determining this much easier for everyone. Where faith schools are undersubscribed, places must be offered to all applicants regardless of faith.
• Children of staff: The School Admissions Code states that this applies to children of staff who have been working at the school for two or more years, or where the staff member has been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skills shortage. Linking records again helps to make determining this easier.

Conclusion

Oversubscription criteria are essential to a fair and transparent admissions process. Where places are appealed, a robust set of protocols also helps to argue the admission authority’s decisions.

It is also a process that can be automated. Where complete information on a child is held in an authority’s education management information system, all relevant information can be submitted by parents, schools and professionals, recorded against the child and considered when oversubscriptions criteria are called upon in the school admissions process.

This makes collecting evidence for appeals much more straightforward. No more manually trawling through records, aspects such as catchment areas can simply be called upon and put forward to an appeals panel.

It also makes determining admissions based on the bespoke criteria of the admissions authority much easier. To use catchment area as an example again, linking to mapping tools makes determining distance from a school incredibly straightforward. The decision can then be logged in the central system, with no need to resort to spreadsheets and physical copies of children’s records and the outcomes of their admissions.

The technology exists now to make the admissions process easier to administer, as well as fairer and more transparent for children and their families.

This is a topic that we’ve covered in greater detail, examining the entire admissions process, in our recent white paper, A fair school admissions process for all. You can download a free copy here.

Reducing risk entails several factors. Most pertinently, worker safety. Rules and regulations exist to protect workers, from health and safety directives to working time directives, covering working conditions to fatigue. Then there’s risk to projects and tasks. If they are done improperly, then tasks need to be redone. This impacts overarching projects, both in terms of time and cost. Of course, accidents and mistakes happen. Building in mitigation for such events is prudent. But what if you can identify patterns and head off errors before they happen? Competency management, as part of a robust workforce management process, can help.

Workforce management – training 

Training management is essential across largescale workforces. From mandatory ongoing courses, refresher courses and training staff in new skills to upskill your workforce and offer career progression, having a robust training programme in place forms the backbone of this. 

By linking training to other areas of your workforce management, such as assessments and scheduling, it makes it possible to identify skills gaps across your workforce. To reduce the risk of these gaps impacting upon project and service delivery, you can appropriately train existing members of staff to fill these gaps.  

It also makes it possible to utilise your training programme to focus on specific areas and tasks where mistakes are occurring. By pooling data from accidents and assessments, you can identify repeat errors. In doing so, you can then tailor your approach to training to better prepare staff for areas in which, statistically, they are most likely to pose a risk to themselves and overarching projects. 

Workforce management – assessments 

Knowing that staff have the appropriate qualifications, skills, training and experience is one thing. But how are they actually fulfilling the tasks to which they have been assigned? Regular, ongoing assessments of your workforce are crucial. This is both from a safety and a service delivery perspective.  

From a safety perspective, many roles within the transport industry pose a safety risk. From infrastructure workers to drivers, the risk of getting things wrong can be catastrophic. It’s prudent to check in to ensure that tasks are being conducted properly. 

From a service delivery perspective, mistakes can result in shoddy work. This means that it needs to be redone, which costs time and money, impacting upon project timelines and budgets.  

This extends to maintenance, too. We regularly see on the rail network, for example, things such as signal failures which result in delays and cancellations. Regular assessments of infrastructure are vital to repairing the roof whilst the sun is shining.  

Overarching planning to manage risk 

Proper, robust planning builds in sufficient time to complete tasks, with enough room for reasonable error. People make mistakes, external factors such as the weather can waylay you and where there are several moving parts. Things don’t always come together as you’d hope. Mitigating for this by building it into your planning is sensible. 

When it comes to specific tasks, however, granular detail is important. When scheduling your workforce, workers can be assigned to shifts on a rolling basis ad infinitum. But how can the specifics and the complexity of each shift and its tasks be considered? How can these then be communicated with staff? 

Using a central system with the ability to overlay such complexity onto shifts can drive efficiency and greater control of the overarching project and its processes. It can be established according to your bespoke business rules and configured to factor in elements such as regulations and directives. 

Understanding what will happen during a shift is important. If maintenance needs to be performed, being able to communicate exactly what equipment is required, the nature of the task and the location helps to prepare people. As the process continues, being able to intelligently alter task timelines based upon previous completion times and rates enables a more accurate scheduling of tasks. If, for example, you have set aside three hours for the completion of a task but staff are regularly completing it in two hours, then future timelines can be adjusted accordingly. 

This helps to drive a more complete understanding of your projects and how your staff are performing against timelines and tasks. This in turn helps to mitigate the risk of work running over time, since you can rely on a robust database of previous work to inform future projects.  

Conclusion 

Finally, the regulatory aspect is crucial. Things such as the working time directive exist to combat elements such as fatigue. A central database that can further call upon the geographic location of staff can help to more efficiently assign them to tasks. If someone is 20mins away from the location of a task, it makes more sense to assign them to it than someone 1hr away. Since travelling time is considered as a factor in fatigue management, it’s an extremely inefficient use of time to swallow it up on travelling times. 

Managing risk extends across the entirety of the transport industry, from workforce safety to service delivery. With so many moving parts – risks – being able to navigate them and efficiently and reliably match those moving parts to your targets is essential to achieving the ultimate goals of your organisation. A well trained, regularly assessed and robustly scheduled workforce forms the backbone of this.  

The technology exists to help largescale transport organisations to gain greater control of their workforce management. From training and assessments to scheduling, having a single view of your workforce facilitates automation, insight and, ultimately, efficiency. It’s a topic we’ve explored in more detail in our recent white paper, Tackling workforce management complexities in transport. You can download your free copy here.

The youth justice domain never stands still. As we create more data and more incisive ways to record and interpret practice and outcomes, we increasingly discover new patterns. These patterns are put to use in achieving our ultimate aim: improved outcomes for the most vulnerable children in our society. Where we can identify unmet needs earlier, we can enable prevention rather than reaction. Where we can know what is not working as well as evaluate what works, we can enact flexible options sooner, when and where they are needed. In depth data mapping of demand and responses is a vital support to frontline youth justice services. Such information has the power to show long-term socio-economic impact. This requires continuous improvements in the application of relevant research and tools and is why CACI remains fully committed to the domain. 

CACI’s ChildView software has been the system of choice for youth justice teams across England and Wales for over 25 years. ChildView supports the entire country of Wales and more than 65% of England’s youth justice teams. We understand for several years it has been a challenging time in the domain; budgets have reduced, skilled staff have been hard to retain, populations are expanding and the cost of living crisis is only serving to exacerbate social issues and stress which leads to avoidable vulnerability exposing children to harm. 

There’s much talk of efficiency, but efficacy is arguably more important. We are committed to continuous development of ChildView to demonstrate effective and efficient use of resources. However, as the largest and only specialist supplier we can uniquely focus on the YOS partnership to provide tools to generate whole system insights and enable collaborative innovation at a local and regional level. ChildView’s ongoing future roadmap focusses on reduced effort to create deeper insights about making a local difference at its core. We have been around for a long time and we intend to build on our unique know how for a lot longer yet. 

That’s why we will work more closely with our customers at a regional level as well as the Youth Justice Board (YJB). We will ensure that ChildView provides compliance with YJB standards by actively helping with implementation in the majority of YOSs and to make ongoing changes to achieve the aims of the YJB. Unique ChildView full case data exchange between CACI systems makes it easier, quicker and more secure to share whole child journey data on young people. This means that rich practice records are shared in a consistent fashion to promote ongoing engagement to reduce risk and build resilience. It helps to ensure continuity and ongoing engagement as young people move between different services and localities, too. 

Behind compliance and reporting, however, we understand partnerships and practitioners are working with real life stories, not just data points. Every young person has their own story and their own context. Understanding this is vital to engaging and making a difference to their outcomes. 

Being able to record often complex and nuanced information on a child at several levels is essential. With multi-agency touchpoints, bringing all of this together into single, relevant dynamic views of the child helps make many more accurate decisions quickly to efficiently navigate multi agency scenarios. This can help to reduce noise and effort through uncertainty and unknowns as well as reduce duplication and questions to appreciate the battles with systemic trauma and trust in the services intending to engage positively with children and young people. 

“Childview has been crucial in all of this in providing the opportunity to capture and analyse significant amounts of data on the different cohorts of children covered under the different strands of Milton Keynes’s Early Support Project,” says Diz Minnitt, head of youth justice and service support at Milton Keynes. “Further, Childview uniquely allows life event characteristics such as undiagnosed speech, language and communication needs, trauma and ACEs to be captured and used to add value to the analysis. This enables us to create rich sub-sets of our prevention data and thoroughly learn about what impact we are having and what is working. We can look at the numbers and the work we are doing that makes a difference.” 

Creating such tangible insights drives us forwards. We are fully committed to supporting the future  of youth justice and developing multi-agency partnerships in the vital work that you do and its outcomes for our society. We offer a unique team comprised of ex-service professionals who carry  your and their passion for this uniquely challenging specialist work. 

The education software and integrated systems that you use to underpin your education services and processes are vital to the effective and efficient operation and oversight of your services. From early years to admissions and transfers, SEND/ALN to virtual school services, technology plays a fundamental role in efficient, effective and fair educational services to meet increasingly complex objectives. But what are your services getting from your software providers? From initial training through to ongoing support and maintenance, your providers play an important role themselves in sustaining your services.

Selecting the right technology means selecting the right partner. It’s not simply a case of buying a system and then switching it on. There’s an implementation to be planned and programmed, data to be exported, cleansed and imported. Then there are ongoing support needs and updates required over time to keep the system secure, compliant and supporting your evolving needs.

Getting started with your education software

Once a decision has been made, how are you going to get your team up to speed with your new education software? Ensuring that training is included in the procurement process is essential. So too is agreeing costs for any extra sessions, such as training and development.

Running parallel to this is ensuring that the configuration of local process covers everything you need. We’ve seen many cases where authorities have purchased the minimum viable product to meet procurement thresholds. They’ve then found layer upon layer of additional cost once they’ve gone live. These costs cover anything from additional infrastructure to third party licence agreements in order to get the system working.

Understanding these hidden extras can greatly help in gaining a more accurate cost of your education software. Building upon minimum viable products can be timely as well as expensive. Mapping this all out can minimise friction and disruption upon implementation. Better still, identifying a partner which has the experience and capability to work with local issues out of the box brings everything into scope upfront. Understanding how ongoing changes will be managed further helps to achieve your objectives over time.

How will your education software be updated?

Another issue we see repeatedly is the downtime associated with upgrades and maintenance. This covers everything from enhancements to the software to critical security patches. Standalone systems can help with this. They can help in greatly reducing the time your software is unavailable for. Any necessary work can also be conducted at times that best suit you.

Where your education software is linked to another piece of software within the same suite of products, updating one facet requires the downtime of everything else, too. So, for example, if your education software provider needs to update another system that is entirely unrelated to education and the work you do, but sits on the same architecture, it will mean that your software will be unavailable whilst their systems are updated.

IMPULSE Nexus – what you see is what you get

CACI has designed its IMPULSE Nexus education software to suit the needs of local authorities like yours. It is modular by design, so you can pick up and plug in the parts that you need. This means you’re free to use as much or as little of IMPULSE Nexus as your needs require.

All our pricing is upfront and transparent. You don’t have to pay for the bits of the software that you don’t need. This helps you manage your overarching software ecosystem that can use IMPULSE Nexus as part, or the heart of it.

Like everyone else, we do conduct upgrade work to IMPULSE Nexus. As a standalone system, however, we can work with you on the best time to conduct these. There are three every year, so there’s always advance warning and time to make arrangements. We also offer a hosting solution which means that we can carry out these upgrades for you as a fully managed service. This further reduces friction and minimises downtime.

Furthermore, as IMPULSE Nexus is a standalone system, any upgrade work won’t impact your integrated systems.

Where you need further support from the team at CACI, our costs are transparent and upfront. Our annual advisory service (AAS) days are bookable in advance or as and when you need them. These are designed to help you with everything from project management to additional training. You can find out more here.

IMPULSE Nexus is used by authorities across the UK, including Birmingham City Council. You can find out more about how it uses IMPULSE Nexus to handle its admissions process here.

If you would like more information on IMPULSE Nexus, please visit our website here.

The idea of trauma informed practice has been around for a while no). It remains, however, a burgeoning area of practice.

The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is attempting to take this forward into commissioning policy. Through a coalition of public service agencies, it aims to promote a framework for trauma informed practice in the region. Knowledge, practice-based evidence, data sharing, combined training and service inputs will set new pathways towards achieving better outcomes for all children in the region.

“Trauma informed practice is a journey, not a destination,” says Lucy Cavell Senior Trauma Informed Practitioner at Barnardo’s, the children’s charity which is coordinating the work of the WMCA trauma informed coalition which sets a policy direction.

There are different approaches in the seven constituent local authorities. For example, Birmingham City Council has a slightly different flavour to other organisations, having taken a holistic approach to training around trauma informed practice within children’s services and schools.

“We’re creating a community of practice on behalf of the coalition. There’s a sharing of knowledge and of best practice being implemented. The coalition is a reflective space with strategic support for locally based networks. It accepts the regional differences in localities such as Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, but it’s still early days, we’re still learning, gathering knowledge and promoting connections and promoting building the evidence base.”

Trauma informed practice in the West Midlands

The WMCA trauma informed coalition was established in 2022 in response to Punishing Abuse, to develop trauma informed practice in the localities. It includes the West Midlands police force, public health, primary care, local authority children’s services, schools, faith groups and charities including homelessness, temporary accommodation, drug, alcohol, domestic violence and mental health.

The trauma informed coalition is borrowing from the learning about violence reduction and service developments in Scotland and other regions, such as in Wales, aiming to adapt this to the history and demographics of the WMCA.

“We saw the potential in being involved in such a coalition and the benefit that it can bring to so many vulnerable children,” says Lucy. “Punishing Abuse is a powerful piece of work that demands action.

One of the primary barriers to this is siloed short-term responses. Services interact with children in the way that they see as being most appropriate and that makes sense to them. Children move in and out to other areas of the regional system with unseen and unmet needs and are dealt with in an entirely different way.”

The importance of a more optimal and joined-up approach which is able to consider much more of the individual context of each child’s journey is something we’ve written about previously.

“One aspect has been the simple creation of training material to promote trauma informed practice,” says Lucy. “We’ve seen real leadership buy-in from the police, with training delivered to over 2,300 officers and staff so far. This covers the basics, from psychology and behaviours to appropriate skills in formulating partnership responses. This has seen a much more compassionate response from the police towards children, young people and families and their communities. Simply by understanding their behaviours differently it has increased the window of tolerance in police settings.”

What the future will bring

There is no blueprint for trauma informed practice and it remains a development area of work with vulnerable young people and their families. As Lucy outlines, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work.

“We hope that establishing a trauma informed framework via the coalition will at least set us on the path to end the punishment of abuse,” concludes Lucy. “The goal is to commission interventions that facilitate systemic resilience. Of particular interest and relevance to establishing a consistent unified approach across Educational settings is the Trauma Informed and Attachment Aware Schools regional certification model, informed by the work of ARC, Virtual Schools, Educational Psychology Services and Barnardo’s in the region.“

“At the heart of the coalition is the intention to engage with adversity and trauma in regional localities to meet needs in an optimal way. Further, to promote evidence from effective collaborative partnership practice by capturing, monitoring and sharing relevant data and the context of individual, family and community adversity and trauma ethically. The objective is to make smarter service commissioning investments for the longer-term future of the region. There will be a need to step back to see what works and what doesn’t. It is, after all, early days.”

Not so long ago CACI produced a video titled Walk in Their Shoes: Johnny’s Story. You can watch it here. It follows the typical journey of a young person brought up in adverse circumstances, tracking a story everyone involved in youth justice and many in education will be familiar with. The relentless churn of life, the destructive tendencies this realises then the horrific prospect of where this can, at its worst, lead. The topics of early intervention and trauma informed practice crop up often, but how much ground has really been covered?

Yesterday’s issues still exist today. School exclusions still happen as a result of schools being ill-equipped to manage the manifestation of trauma in such children as Johnny. They move from school to school, home to home, experiencing instability at every turn. This leads to disjointed record keeping and tracking of their journey. Different schools approach things in different ways. The transition to different local authorities results in intervention from different youth justice teams. This means more people coming and going and the going over of old ground.

How can trauma informed practice change Johnny’s Story?

It’s one thing realising an issue, quite another solving it. To fully understand the journey that any young person has been on, joined-up record keeping and a consistent thread of information is vital. As the young person moves from school to school and/or area to area, it is important that their information is appropriately shared with their next school or local authority. If it’s not, context is lost. Trauma informed practice is impossible without knowledge of events in a young person’s life.

Joined up record keeping is crucial in even the most vanilla of journeys. Where youth justice teams are involved, the context of the journey is even more so. If a young person arrives with limited information, then it necessitates the going over of old ground with them. Repetition of questions limits responses and creates mistrust in the services that are there to help them improve their outcomes. This limits the opportunities for trauma informed practice.

YOTs are seeing just over 8,000 new children (aged 10-17) entering their services every year. Consistent and reliable record keeping helps them to process these vulnerable young people. Services can then focus on achieving the best possible outcomes for them.

The most dramatic aspect of Johnny’s Story, of course, is the fact that he commits a murder. Thankfully, this isn’t a common occurrence, but young people possessing weapons still is. There were just under 3,500 knife or offensive weapons offences in the 2021/22 reporting period. This shows the prevalence of young people in vulnerable positions carrying weapons that can result in loss of life. As Johnny’s Story serves to highlight, such weapons are carried for protection rather than intent, but it only takes a moment for that to change.

Are things heading in the right direction?

The good news is that the number of such offences – the carrying of offensive weapons – has fallen from a high of 4,500 in 2017/18. Similarly, the number of new children entering the services of YOTs has fallen 10% year on year and is down 78% on the 2011/12 period which saw a record high. There has been a steady downward trajectory ever since.

Whilst these are encouraging figures which clearly demonstrate that the hard work of YOTs, local authority leaders and police is working, there are other areas of concern.

The latest data published 18 May 2023 by the government shows that, “Local authorities identified an estimated 94,900 children missing education, that is not registered at school or otherwise receiving suitable education, at some point during the 2021/22 academic year.” Estimates, however, vary as to the exact number depending upon differing definitions of missing school, as you’ll see in the National Youth Agency document in the next section.

This is another area where joined-up thinking and a consistent and reliable thread of data are vital. Local authorities have an obligation to check up on children who are not being educated at school and are being electively home educated. Schools must inform the authority if a child is excluded, so there is an onus on the authority to follow up on such cases.

It is clear that many are falling through the cracks. The Covid pandemic undoubtedly played a role, with many children not turning up again when children returned to schools in September 2020. This leaves such young people open to the threat of exploitation.

How young people like those in Johnny’s Story can become exploited

The most prominent of this exploitation is County Lines drug dealing activities. Gang activity is central to Johnny’s Story and is something that offers many vulnerable young people an identity and a perceived escape from their position. Exact numbers are impossible to come by, but notable estimates exist as to how many young people are involved in County Lines activities.

The National Youth Agency summarises the estimates on page four of this document. They cite data from the Home Office that c.27,000 young people are involved in County Lines, with The Children’s Society estimating that 4,000 of those are in London alone. Of course, estimates again vary here. The Children’s Commissioner noted in a Channel 4 documentary Britain’s Child Drug Runners (sadly no longer available on the channel’s streaming service) that 50,000 children are involved. Either way, it’s an unacceptably high number and represents a significant challenge.

Early intervention is vital in improving Johnny’s Story

The advantage of a joined-up record extends beyond the individual. Identifying patterns from a culmination of journeys can play a crucial role in early intervention. By the time vulnerable young people are involved in activities such as County Lines, it’s all but too late. Identifying their vulnerability in advance of reaching that stage is where stories such as Johnny’s can really be turned around.

Technology is fundamental to this. Where manual records are kept, information becomes siloed into teams and, worse, individuals. Maintaining transparent, up to date records helps keep YOT workers and their teams informed of each journey of each young person in their services. Then, if they move on, either the worker or the young person, the record can be shared with the next YOT worker involved in the case, furnishing them with knowledge and understanding of that case straight away.

Systems such as CACI’s ChildView facilitate the full case data transfer of files when a young person moves on from a service. This means that their next locality has vital context regarding the case immediately. YOTs working in tandem with one another creates a rich tapestry of information at an individual and holistic level. This will help to inform one another of best practices and create data mapping that can be used to inform better practice interventions in the future.

Conclusion

Johnny’s Story is grimly familiar to so many of you. Maybe not all of it, but so many vulnerable young people have experienced at least part of it. From constantly moving home, having different adults in their lives all the time, failing to settle at school and getting shunted from one to the other, lashing out in the form of petty crime and damaging public property, to seeking identity and purpose in gang-related activities; it is a very easy trap for them to fall into.

The good news is that things are improving. There is greater awareness of the issues facing these young people and the burgeoning area of trauma informed practice, for example, promises a better informed future roadmap of service responses. Each authority needs to be interoperable with every other, however, to truly open the door to fully informed practices and services.

Technology will facilitate this. In order to avoid the constant repetition of Johnny’s Story, it’s vital that authorities and YOTs embrace the possibilities.

For more information on ChildView, please click here.

Government bailouts to the tune of £1bn are ensuring that councils across England can cut their deficits. In return for this SEND safety valve funding, a focus on inclusivity of educational services to children with identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is demanded. The move is designed to move councils away from a reliance on costly special measures educations. With inclusivity, it is expected that children with SEND will be reintegrated into mainstream school settings. Those who have been previously excluded, will be reintegrated into the mainstream setting.

The packages and fine print are different for each council, but these are the overarching themes. Councils are expected to work towards inclusion and integration, whilst being more accountable for their processes. How can councils achieve this?

The role of technology in supporting SEND safety valve funding

In creating transparency and accountability, technology will be fundamental to councils. As part of many of the safety valve funding bailouts, the government expects to see results. Maintaining manual systems of spreadsheets or paper-based notes is inefficient and ineffective. Being able to call upon robust digital records with every course of action mapped will save time and create much needed transparency.

Education, health and care plans (EHCPs) are also central to the SEND safety valve funding aims. It is important that each child who needs one receives one. One complaint across the board has been the inconsistency of the provision of this service across England. It has become something of a postcode lottery. Reshaping EHCPs was a central component of the SEND Review in 2022. The safety valve funding provides another opportunity to meet this challenge.

An aspect of this is early intervention. Many children go with unmet needs for a long period of time. This can result in behavioural challenges, exclusions and even entry into the youth justice system. A study by the National Institute for Health Research in 2021 found that 60% of children entering a youth justice service had an undiagnosed developmental language disorder (DLD).

Applying special measures later down the line is a costly process both financially and societally. Early intervention is a vastly preferable way of handling such issues.

Technology will support councils in monitoring their work in all these areas. EHCPs require a robust and consistent thread of attainment and information that will follow the child from 0-25. How children are included and reintegrated will also require input from several touchpoints such as parents, schools and professionals. Creating a central data hub for each child will make provisioning for their education easier. It will also make evidencing action points straightforward.

How SEND safety valve funding will improve inclusion

Primarily by building capacity in mainstream schools, thereby reducing the dependency on specialist provision. The SEND safety valve funding is there to directly support this, providing additional support in mainstream schools to support children with SEND.

This can cover EHCPs, too, with identified SEND on the increase as awareness of unmet needs increases. Having the administrative capacity to oversee EHCPs for every child with SEND is a challenge. Again, this is where technology will play a crucial supporting role for councils and their educational facilities.

Of course, specialist provision will still be required in some circumstances. Rather than use it as a go-to, however, the government would like to see a reduction in this. Creating a strong base of evidence, with all of a child’s records and professional inputs, will make it easier for schools and councils when demonstrating why such a course of action has been taken.

How SEND safety valve funding will support integration

In a similar way, SEND safety valve funding will support integration and reintegration. Exclusions happen but understanding why is paramount. SEND safety valve funding won’t eradicate exclusions and there will be circumstances in which they are necessary. When a child is excluded, however, having the context around their journey can help to inform next steps. Where there is SEND and unmet needs, can a child be reintegrated into a mainstream school environment where extra provisions have been arranged?

For reintegrating previously excluded children, a robust data source is imperative. Why was the child excluded? What were the circumstances? What are the circumstances in that child’s life? Were there any unmet or undiagnosed needs? Can new arrangements satisfy their educational needs within a mainstream setting?

This is a topic we’ve explored in a previous blog. The role of councils and schools in gathering accurate and reliable data is important in understanding not only a child’s educational journey, but their circumstances beyond the school gates.

Conclusion

SEND safety valve funding offers councils and schools an opportunity to recalibrate their services. And their approach to children displaying challenging behaviours. Understanding these behaviours and enacting early intervention will help prevent exclusions and improve inclusion for children with SEND.

Deploying a robust technology ecosystem will be crucial to the success of safety valve funding and councils and schools meeting the challenges laid before them. Joining the dots between a child’s circumstances and their education will drive understanding. This, ultimately, will determine the success or failure of safety valve funding. Deploying improved SEND provisions is one thing. Evidencing their effectiveness and meeting the goals of inclusion and integration are another. A strong evidence base will further drive understanding of those measure which work and those which do not.

For more information on how IMPULSE Nexus from CACI can support your education services in meeting the challenges laid out in the safety valve funding initiative, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/impulse/

Elective home education (EHE) has been on the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. A recent report by Schools Week suggests that elective home education has risen by 60% since the pandemic. Up to 125,000 children now educated in this way.

There are obvious safeguarding issues for local authorities to follow up on, from children missing education to ensuring that those children who are being home educated are in a safe environment and receiving an appropriate education.

There are significant barriers to this for local authorities, however, not least in the form of there being no legal requirement for parents to inform local authorities that they are educating their child(ren) at home. So how can the challenge of monitoring these children be met?

This challenge is particularly acute for children who simply never enter full time education. Where a child was previously attending a school prior to receiving elective home education, schools have a duty to inform local authorities of their deletion from the school roll. A joined-up data approach is essential in order that correct and robust oversight is available.

As the Schools Week report highlights, however, growing numbers of elective home education pupils will inevitably result in a greater strain on local authorities in relation to monitoring and safeguarding.

With more children to keep tabs on not being met with a similar increase in the number of available resources, it is vital that authorities find the most effective and efficient route to fulfilling their obligations.

How can authorities monitor elective home education students?

Data sharing is one obvious area in which authorities can help themselves and each other. Having a technology ecosystem in place that facilitates data capture from schools, local authorities, parents and any other professionals involved in a child’s educational journey plays a significant role in creating the transparency required for local authorities to act.

The background context for each elective home education child is another aspect that helps local authorities. If a child is known to local youth justice services, has identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England – additional learning needs (ALN) in Wales – or has previously been excluded from school, then there are areas around safeguarding and appropriate provision of education to them.

This ties into the emerging area of trauma-informed practice when it comes to dealing with children and young people across the education and youth justice sectors. Put simply, context is vital, yet can only be factored in with a joined-up approach is adopted.

Of course, none of that is to say that every elective home education child has safeguarding concerns around them. Many parents and families opt for elective home education for myriad reasons and do a perfectly good job of educating their children. It is still important, however, that is satisfied in the eyes of the local authority.

Fulfilling obligations to elective home education students

So, how can local authorities fulfil their obligations for elective home education children? Making the capture of relevant data as easy as possible is the first step.

• If a child is taken off the register at the school, the school has an obligation to inform the local authority. How is this data received by the appropriate personnel at the authority?
• Once visits are scheduled to families, how are the outcomes of such visits recorded within the authority?
• If a child moves into or out of a local authority, how is that data received or shared with their next authority?

Technology is at the forefront of this. Removing the need to manually trawl through records makes the process far more efficient. If practitioners can easily access full case records, they can pick up and understand a child’s journey quickly. They can then record the outcomes of their own work against a child’s record. This maintains a single thread of information relevant to the child.

Using Modular Education Management Information Systems

Portals can play a significant role, too. For example, IMPULSE from CACI is a modular system which features school, parent, provider and professional portals. Each touchpoint with the child has the ability to record relevant information which is then stored against a single record. This helps to maintain a holistic view of every child, with relevant data being made available to relevant parties.

In the case of elective home education children, local authorities being notified instantly when a child is taken off register or excluded will trigger the appropriate follow up activities for the relevant personnel.

Ultimately, treating each family and child fairly and transparently is paramount. Every child has a right to access education, ensuring that families are appropriately providing this ultimately falls to the local authority.

The tools exist to make this process more effective and efficient for everyone. Our data sheet takes a closer look at elective home education, what local authorities need to do inline with the Education Act and how they can best support children and families.

Families and their children move around frequently for myriad reasons. How can councils and youth justice teams maintain information relevant on these young people when they have fallen into their services? Each touchpoint with a young person in the youth justice system reveals a bit more about their story – losing that data and that insight costs time and effort. It duplicates work and can further disenfranchise young people and their families. Having a shared record, which is appropriately accessible across local authorities and youth justice teams, can help to join the dots in their stories to from a single, consistent data thread.

Data sharing across disparate systems can be difficult. Technology moves at such a fast pace and budgets don’t always keep pace with the changes. This results in multiple systems being used across different authorities to try and achieve the same goal – improve outcomes for young people in the youth justice system.

Transferring data between youth justice teams

The seamless transfer of data works to the benefit of local authorities, youth justice teams and, most pertinently, young people. When a young person moves location, it is vital that their youth justice data follows them. This helps the team in their new location to understand their story and circumstances, reducing duplication of work from one location to another.

It also facilitates swift and informed decision making. Where a single accessible record has been maintained by relevant professionals associated with the young person’s journey, it makes understanding and interpreting that story far easier for professionals new to it.

There are patterns that can be identified in the data. For example, we can easily demonstrate the profile of young person likely to fall into youth justice services. Looked after children are a good example. The Laming Review, keeping children in care out of trouble, notes that: “As a result of their experiences before entering care, and during care, children in care are at greater risk of entering the youth justice system than their peers. Looked-after children are more likely to be exposed to the risk factors established in research as associated with the onset of youth offending than the general population of children.”

Taking the data held by youth justice teams on looked after children will help them to build out a broader understanding of approaches that work. Approaches that work towards improving their outcomes and also approaches that work in understanding why they’ve ended up in the youth justice system.

The value of data in youth justice

Making this information accessible to other professionals can help with early intervention. The data held by a youth justice service can also be relied upon by other youth justice services to help form understanding from a holistic view of approaches to the issues faced.

Sharing of vital information can be an incredibly time intensive, manual process requiring duplication of data. This leaves the process open to human error and the natural time constraints placed upon already stretched services.

In Wales, this problem has been removed. Each of the 22 youth justice services in Wales now uses ChildView from CACI. This means that young people moving within Wales can have their full case record transferred to their new locality automatically. All data is gathered from ChildView via the data exchange button. Enter the reason for transfer and the system collects all the data and transfers it on. This greatly helps in ensuring that relevant professionals have all the information that they need on a young person in order to advance their journey from a firm base of understanding.

Being able to instantly have all the information on a young person moving to a new locality helps to improve their outcomes. They won’t face duplication of effort in another professional entering their lives asking the same questions as before. Instead, a seamless transfer of their record is facilitated.

A joined-up youth justice approach in Wales

The single system response in Wales makes this data transfer frictionless. It also enables youth offending teams to work in an interoperable fashion, whilst also retaining their independence of approach to this complex work.

Applied learnings are vital in breaking down this complexity. It’s something that we see more clearly with aspects such as children missing education, which is an increasingly prevalent issue. It’s also one that no one has a firm grasp of. Estimates of the number of children missing education in the UK vary from 50,000 to 250,000. This depends on what you read and what your parameters for missing education are. One thing which is clear, however, is that it’s an unacceptably high number whichever lens you view it through. How can this issue be tackled by the authorities tasked with resolving it?

Disjointed and incomplete records only serve to exacerbate the issue. Young people fall through the cracks far too easily and disappear into the ether. Understanding a child’s school patterns is a vital piece of information. Linking education and circumstances to the work of youth justice workers is vital. Establishing this single view, from multiple systems and sources, paints a complete picture.

How ChildView helps

That’s why we’ve made ChildView an interoperable system. One that’s capable of working with and alongside other software to create an overarching picture. Being able to seamlessly transfer data is only part of the picture. Being able to seamlessly receive data is also of utmost importance. A young person’s journey doesn’t end when they move location.

Creating this single view drives insight and understanding that is not just applicable at an individual level, but also across every young person in the youth justice system. Having this single view in Wales will help its 22 local authorities to build a comprehensive understanding of youth offending. What works in tackling the issue, what helps in improving outcomes for each young person? Ultimately it will help in reducing the number of young people in the youth justice system, either as first time or reoffenders. A complete picture improves their safety and wellbeing. It plays a vital role in supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

For more information on how ChildView supports the complex and challenging work of youth justice team, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/childview/

CACI is delighted to announce that its Cygnum software is now being used as Network Rail’s planning and administration solution for training its 43,000-strong workforce.

Cygnum supports all aspects of Network Rail’s training management, from automated creation of courses based on demand, intelligent allocation of staff, trainers and resources to courses, to communication of planning and optimisation of changes. Cygnum will assist Network Rail in achieving a holistic view of all its training and results, helping it to realise efficiencies across the process and ensure that all staff are appropriately trained. The attendance and results of courses are logged in Cygnum, with the system submitting course invitation and joining instructions to Network Rail staff, as well as actioning any follow-ups as required.

“We are delighted that Network Rail has chosen CACI’s Cygnum software to support and underpin its training planning and administration process,” says Ollie Watson, Group Business Development Director at CACI. “We are looking forward to supporting Network Rail in achieving a more efficient and streamlined training programme that delivers necessary and ongoing training to its workforce as optimally as possible.”

For more information on Cygnum and how it supports businesses, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/

CACI is pleased to announce that its Cygnum solution is now being used by Transport for London (TfL) to support the competency management process for its 4,500 London Underground drivers.

Cygnum is designed to assist organisations in all aspects of their workforce management, from scheduling and competency management, through to training and recruitment, helping to keep appropriately skilled, experienced and qualified staff performing tasks. Cygnum will assist TfL in gaining a holistic view of the ongoing competencies of its London Underground drivers.

“We’re delighted that TfL has chosen our Cygnum software to underpin the ongoing competency management of its tube drivers,” says Ollie Watson, Group Business Development Director at CACI. “We’re looking forward to continuing to work closely with TfL on its Cygnum solution to help ensure that its competency management programme is run efficiently and effectively into the future.”

For more information on Cygnum and how it supports businesses, please visit https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/