Data hosting isn’t the most interesting, or even the most relevant, topic of conversation for youth justice workers. Yet it plays a vital role in underpinning the processes that youth justice teams implement in working towards their ultimate goal: improving outcomes for young people. So, we wanted to take a couple of minutes to look at why data hosting is so important for youth justice workers and teams.

Security

First and foremost, securing your data is paramount. As we’ve seen recently with Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council and Hackney Council, the cost of losing data can be huge. Both councils fell victim to ransomware attacks, costing both significant sums of money and majorly disrupting their services. While bills ran into the millions, the disruption also affected vital service delivery, including those to vulnerable young people.

Having your data securely backed up at regular intervals helps to minimise the effects of a hack, or even something like a natural disaster. The process is designed to cover the worst-case scenario.

Cost efficiency

By utilising an external hosting service, you are also leveraging their security spend. Keeping data safe inhouse is a hugely expensive process. Microsoft, for example, spends well over £1bn every year on security. Tapping into that spend helps to reduce your costs.

Such organisations are always updating and testing their infrastructure, too. The reputational damage to a company such as Microsoft or Amazon Web Services would be vast if a successful attack was carried out against them. It’s in their best interests to keep everyone’s data secure.

In utilising a fully managed hosting solution, youth justice teams can switch the expense of hosting from a capital expenditure to an operational expenditure. This frees up funds that can be diverted to frontline resources; improving outcomes for the young people in your service.

Flexibility

It also keeps you fully in control of your data and how it is used. Permissions can be tightly controlled and the flow of information likewise. This is important in ensuring that your data is only accessed by the right people, at the right time.

This helps to keep your services running during times of strain. When something like a global pandemic occurs, and everyone is suddenly forced away from the office, keeping your service joined up is vital. A single point of access helps with this, maintaining the provision of requisite data to your team to enable your services to continue running.

You also have control over how regularly your data is backed up, according to the needs of your youth justice team. This offers increased flexibility over the cost, too.

Peace of mind

So, let’s imagine the worst-case scenario has come to pass. You’ve been hacked. What happens next?

If your hosting is done inhouse, then you’ve got a serious issue. All the data hosted on premise is lost. Identifying what has gone missing and how you will recover it is all but impossible.

By utilising a fully managed hosting service, the only loss to your organisation will be the time since your data was last backed up. As this will be done regularly, losses will be kept to a minimum. You can simply switch to your backed up data and maintain your service delivery. If your data is backed up irregularly, or not at all, the consequences can be far graver.

Compliance

A new era of data regulation was ushered in by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018. One of its central tenets is security. Losing personal data can lead to fines. Big fines. Being able to evidence that you’ve done all that you can to protect sensitive data goes a long way to appeasing the regulator in worst case scenarios.

It is, however, another factor to consider. Choosing a hosting partner with up to date, relevant security certificates, for example ISO 27001, is crucial in this respect.

Training

Ransomware attacks, such as the one experienced by Hackney Council, are often the result of phishing attacks. Put simply, these are malicious emails designed to look legitimate so that people within your organisation click on them. Once details have been entered, attackers can easily access your system. This means that your frontline security is only as strong as its weakest link.

Opting to utilise a fully managed hosting solution can mitigate the impact of this weakness. It can never resolve it, however, only complimenting robust governance and systems. Ongoing staff training and awareness is vital in minimising the initial risk of a cyber attack. Should the worst happen, your system response will either exacerbate or minimise its impact.

Going green

On-premise hosting requires individual equipment, maintenance and power supply. Switching to a co-hosting or cloud solution reduces your energy consumption.  There is a commitment by all companies and agencies to reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption – switching your hosting solution can contribute to meeting these commitments. At a time when energy costs have risen significantly, taking the green option isn’t only good for the environment.

Updates

From time to time your software will need updating. When you choose a hosted service, your provider will usually carry out this work as part of its services. This means that you don’t need to worry about planning IT time in ahead of an upgrade process, your provider will let you know when it’s happening and everything will be taken care of for you. This significantly reduces the stress and burden upon your resources in completing such work.

Conclusion

Utilising a hosting service carries a multitude of benefits for your local authority and its youth justice services. From reducing cost and helping to meet environmental targets, to meeting regulatory requirements and freeing up resources to focus on other projects, hosting can fundamentally support your youth justice services.

It may not be the topic at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but it is worth considering the worst-case scenario – what if your authority is attacked, or data goes missing? With nefarious hackers constantly seeking to exploit weaknesses, considering the fundamental impact of a successful attack is important. Losing data on vulnerable young people will have a huge bearing on the service that you need to provide to them. Improving outcomes for them is, ultimately, the desired outcome.

Whilst hosting may not be a silver bullet to these threats, it can mitigate their impact if they are successful. At the same time, it can reduce costs and your carbon footprint.

For more information on CACI’s hosting services for youth justice teams, please click here.

In many cases, the story behind young people in the youth justice sector gets lost in myriad systems and professional bodies. Information gets siloed, making it incredibly challenging for Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) to paint a clear and complete picture of each young person that comes to their attention. Without all the requisite information being readily available, and with several cases to work on simultaneously, how can YOTs be reasonably expected to discover and consider all the underlying issues?

Bringing all of the available information on each young person into one central source of truth is helping YOTs to navigate each young person’s story, using valuable insight gained across their cases to make informed decisions and interventions for each young person.

Using technology to improve outcomes in youth justice

Advancements in technology are really supporting YOTs in improving outcomes for young people in the youth justice sector. Aspects such as data mapping are enabling a new understanding of youth offending patterns, making it easier for YOTs to spot intervention points and improve their outcomes.

ChildView, CACI’s specialist youth justice management information and reporting system, is designed with this goal in mind. By providing a rich and accurate view of what is going on in the system, ChildView supports YOTs with all the latest multi-agency information and activity in one place.

By bringing together previously disparate teams and professionals, ChildView makes is easier to read and understand each young person’s journey.

Telling the youth justice story

Using a central database enables each young person’s story to be told and understood. “For me, what I like about ChildView is that it tells a story about the young person when they come to us,” says Sue Pattison, service and case support worker at South Tees Youth Offending Service. “For example, it informs us if they were released under investigation and what was attached to that offence. It enables us to record their story and its outcomes as a process and it just flows, making it easier to read and understand, meaning that we can make better informed decisions.”

Bringing together different agencies is a crucial step in telling each story. “We have moved two members of staff into each area team to support our prevention work, and they are to be supported by wider YOS resources,” explains Paul Harrison, partnerships manager at South Tees Youth Offending Service. “We have used ChildView for this as we want to keep every bit of information about the young person in one place. This means that we can review why that young person has required early help and what the outcomes of it were.”

Report and develop

Once a young person’s story has been understood and acted upon, it is vital to gather information on the outcomes in order to help identify similar issues in other young people’s stories and to understand how well each action and intervention has worked. Again, by recording all reports in a central system, YOTs can easily identify and review cases, using them to inform future decision-making processes.

“The reporting module in ChildView has enabled us to swiftly report on all aspects of our service, particularly the area of re-offending, which has allowed us to identify and characterise different groups of young people that we work with,” says Troy Hutchinson, performance systems and information manager at Luton Youth Offending Service. “As a performance manager I am able to develop localised reports that empower members of staff, whether they are case managers or practice managers, to complete their own specific reporting tasks and use the tools to support practice development.”

ChildView is supporting YOTs across the UK to gain a complete picture of each young person that comes into their services, enabling them to understand each story and focus on the outcomes.

What happens when a child is excluded from school? How is their educational journey completed? What can schools, parents and professionals involved with children in education do to intervene sooner, to help prevent exclusions? What is the profile of children excluded from school? Can we do more to support groups who are more likely to face exclusion?

Schools play a vital support role in the lives of children and young people, a role brought sharply into focus by the Covid pandemic. Bringing data together, we can join the dots in each student’s journey, linking their education to their circumstances to help improve their outcomes. For more context on the statistics provided in this blog, please take a look at our related white paper, which you can download for free.

Disadvantaging the disadvantaged

When we take a closer look at the numbers behind school exclusions, it becomes clear that children already born into disadvantaged circumstances are further disadvantaged by the education system. Children from the 10% most deprived areas of the UK are more than twice as likely to experience exclusion from school as other children (7.1% of these children experiences exclusion, compared to 3.4% from elsewhere). This extends beyond those areas, too. In 2017/18, 13.65% of children eligible for free school meals were excluded from school.

It’s a clear pattern. These children, too, are far more likely to be identified with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). 25% of children with identified SEND are also eligible for free school meals. The link between their circumstances and their education is obvious. If you’re from a deprived background, you’re far more likely to be identified with SEND and far more likely to be excluded from school. The already disadvantaged face a greater uphill battle than their peers.

In 2019, some 78,150 children were looked after in England. Alarmingly, that number has risen 28% over the previous decade. 56,160 were officially placed with foster families. When factoring in children living with relatives, e.g. grandparents, this number rises to much closer to 200,000.

How can education help?

Besides the obvious point around providing stability, structure, relationships and food, the role of schools requires careful consideration when it comes to supporting vulnerable members of society. The school admissions process can be haphazard and manual, with children missing spots at their preferred, often their most convenient, schools.

Failure to identify a child’s circumstances can lead to missed opportunities which carry knock on effects into a young person’s life. It’s a topic we’ve explored through Lara’s Story, which you can watch here:

Walk in their shoes – Lara’s story

Joining the dots

By creating a complete, holistic record of every child and young person, authorities and schools can join the dots in each story. Understanding this story is fundamental to improving outcomes. Where c.50,000 children are missing education across the UK, how can we identify them, those that have fallen through the gaps?

This is also in the realms of youth justice, since there are c.50,000 children involved in county lines gang activities. The similarity in those numbers cannot be coincidental.

We can easily identify, via basic data analysis, where the children who fall through the gaps are most likely to be. By extending our analysis, by painting a complete picture, we can begin to make appropriate provisions and improve outcomes for these young people.

As we can see in Lara’s Story, often innocent judgements can have severe consequences for young people and their families. As we approach a cost of living crisis, with rising energy bills and rising inflation, many families will feel the pinch. Little things like paying for the bus can quickly become unaffordable. The compound affect of this is material to a young person’s life.

Simply linking circumstances to a child’s education drives understanding. This understanding can be used to improve outcomes. And it can be done simply, too, via a central, accessible record. Where schools, parents and professionals can record and share information, joining the dots is made easy. You can then start to join several dots, creating rich data insight to inform future practices and roadmaps, understanding the best way to handle young people in specific circumstances.

Data informed practice extends from education through youth justice. Improving outcomes for young people is the combined target.

You can read our whitepaper, Joining the dots: The power of technology systems to transform outcomes for vulnerable children and young people here.

Conwy and Denbighshire Youth Justice Service has chosen ChildView from CACI to underpin its vital work in supporting young people in its services across both counties. Conwy and Denbighshire will use ChildView to support its team across the both regions, looking after the needs of young people in, and on the periphery of, the local youth justice system.

The move means that ChildView now underpins youth justice work across the whole of Wales, with all 22 local authorities now utilising the system to create positive changes across the country.

“We chose ChildView as the fit for purpose youth justice system that best meets our service requirements,” says Matt Morgan, Service Manager at Conwy and Denbighshire Youth Justice Service. “We are looking forward to using the system to enable us to improve outcomes for the children and young people that we work with.”

“We are delighted that Conwy and Denbighshire has chosen ChildView to support its vital work,” says Phil Lucy, Head of Children and Young People at CACI. “It is a great opportunity for us and, more broadly, youth justice services across Wales, that ChildView is now used universally across Wales. The data insights this will help Welsh authorities to build, will have a tangible impact on the outcomes experienced by vulnerable young people across the country.”

ChildView enables youth justice services to record the full range of multi-agency working, in-depth casework and chronologies (including Adverse Childhood Experience ACES). They can then securely share data on the young people in their services. It facilitates deeper insights into what is going on at an individual level, as well as holistically across services. This means that Welsh authorities, YJB Cymru and Government and local justice services can better understand their work and make informed decisions about effective response to each young person, as well as to prevent offending behaviour.

With ChildView being used across Wales, it means that authorities can easily and seamlessly share data and case files with one another. ChildView is interoperable with other systems, too, meaning that youth offending teams can share vital information with schools, building the evidence base and responses to offending behaviour which will help to prevent and reduce the impact of crime.

For more information on ChildView, please visit: www.caci.co.uk/software/childview/

Solihull Council has chosen CACI’s ChildView youth justice software to underpin its youth justice work in the area. As part of the move to enhance engagement with young people and improve their outcomes, Solihull Council has sought to strategically evolve its services. Partnering with CACI will help Solihull Council in engaging with young people, recording their journeys and data mapping their outcomes for the benefit of all young people in their services.

ChildView will support Solihull’s youth justice practitioners by providing a holistic view of the council’s services. This will help Solihull’s youth justice team to efficiently and effectively deliver its vital frontline services, gaining deeper insight and understanding of the journeys it seeks to improve.

“Following a detailed consideration of the requirements for our Youth Offending Service, our engagement with young people and extensive market research, Solihull Council is pleased to announce CACI as our new Youth Justice partner,” says Zubair Afzal, consultant programme manager ant Solihull Council. “We look forward to delivering an improved Youth Justice offer in collaboration with CACI.”

“We’re delighted that Solihull Council has chosen our ChildView youth justice software to underpin its vital service delivery,” says Phil Lucy, director of CACI’s Children & Young Person’s division. “It’s an exciting opportunity for us to expand upon our service delivery in the West Midlands and support Solihull Council in evolving and enhancing its service delivery to vulnerable young people.”

Birmingham City Council has more than 400 schools in its area and made the decision in August 2019 to deploy IMPULSE Nexus from CACI to support its school admissions process. To date, Birmingham City Council has used IMPULSE Nexus to administer school admissions across all its schools, helping it to maintain a fair and transparent process that handles this delicate process with care, accuracy and flexibility.

IMPULSE Nexus has also supported the schools across Birmingham City Council with in-year admissions, allocating spaces to children who need to move between schools during the school year. “The system is a major step forward,” said one school portal user during a recent Birmingham City Council IMPULSE Nexus user group meeting. “We need the data to be correct at both ends due to the transiency of some pupils and IMPULSE Nexus has ensured that we always have instant access to accurate data.”

“We can get distances to schools instantly”

An important factor in determining school allocations is a child’s domestic location and how far they are from the school being applied to. IMPULSE Nexus automates this part of the process for the school admissions process, making it easier for administrators to make swift decisions based upon this metric. “It’s a lot quicker to get people on the waiting list and we can get distances to schools instantly, which is really useful for our admissions processes,” commented another school admissions administrator.

“Having the distances so quickly and easily is great – we know immediately who the closest person to a school is,” added another.

The school portal within IMPULSE Nexus acts as a central record from which all information on a child and school can be viewed. This means that administrators can easily access relevant information, such as distances and the local school rankings. “The school portal is a major step forward for us, it’s great to be able to see data in real time in there,” says one user of IMPULSE Nexus within Birmingham City Council’s network of schools. “It makes it really straightforward to manage the process and it’s easy to see where your students are.”

Communication made simple

IMPULSE Nexus has also made communication easier between the schools, admissions teams and Birmingham City Council professionals. Not only can communication be automated via the use of templates within the system, the need for email communications has been reduced as administrators and admissions teams can find the information they need themselves within IMPULSE Nexus. “Having distances available automatically is great, as is the ability to download rankings spreadsheets instantly,” says another. “I like the speed of everything, I’m contacting the admissions teams more infrequently which cuts out unnecessary emails and calls. The school, overall, is emailing the local authority a lot less now, as the data is available in real time and the speed of access is really good.”

Another benefit unlocked within Birmingham City Council has been the ability to rank schools in the area, with IMPULSE Nexus linking directly to the schools ranking system. “It’s a really useful piece of functionality,” said one administrator. “IMPULSE Nexus links directly to the ranking system, which makes allocating places easier. We can import and export relevant data automatically, too, which saves a lot of time in requesting and sending information.”

Overall, IMPULE Nexus is helping the schools, administrators and professionals across Birmingham City Council to more efficiently, accurately and easily manage the schools admission process for the children in the area.

Automation

Moving away from a manual process makes the whole school admissions process far smoother. Without the need to rely on data input and sifting through spreadsheets for information, decisions can be made much quicker, more accurately and more independently. Resolution of appeals is made simple with a reliable data trail of decisions and why they were reached. In year admissions can be handled swiftly by easily identifying which schools have places available and adding children to waiting lists can be done instantly.

By further linking your admissions process to aspects such as school rankings, distances travelled and each child’s personal journey, swifter, fairer and more transparent decisions can be reached. “The reduction in the manual process has been great,” concluded one administrator. “Having so much in-depth information available to us, with the ability to share data instantly, makes the whole process so much easier.”

In September, the Additional Learning Needs (ALN) code went live across Wales. The ALN code replaces the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) framework that will continue to function across England. The change is being made in order to bring support networks and resources together and improve outcomes for children and young people with identified additional learning needs.

Obviously, one of the major changes is in the wording. Special educational needs replace additional learning needs; therefore, SENCOs will become ALNCOs. The changes, however, are more than just linguistic and will involve significant changes in thinking about process and practice.

At present, any child or young person recognised as having SEN is given an individual education plan (IEP). These are being phased out in Wales, to be replaced by an individual development plan (IDP). IEPs stop when a young person finishes school; IDPs will carry on if the young person attends higher or further education, covering their entire education journey from 0-25.

ALN will further cover children and young people who have learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD), bringing LDD and SEN together in a single code.

Highlights

• Covers each young person with ALN from 0-25
• Merges SEN and LDD
• IDPs to replace IEPs

About the IDP

IDPs are structured to include minimum standards that must be adhered to by every school and local authority:

• A record of the child’s identified, developing and changing needs
• Required additional provisions for each child
• A timely, current action plan and agreed outcomes for each child
• How each element of progress is and will be measured
• Information that enables accountability which is legally enforceable
• Review dates to measure actions, tasks and outcomes

Ensuring that IDPs work efficiently and effectively will require services to collaborate to ensure that children recognised with ALN receive the support that they need to achieve the stated goals. This co-ordination between schools, colleges, other providers and local authority services will require a greater degree of flexibility in receiving and transferring holistic case records and data seamlessly.

It will also require more robust data capture, entry and checking to ensure that all contributions have been considered and the information is current, accurate and relevant within a child’s IDP. This is vital given that the IDP is an accountable and legally enforceable document. In sharing and collaborating on such important documents, their security and management is also paramount, containing as they will vast quantities of sensitive personal data.

Children, parents, outcomes

The collaboration goes beyond just working with other authorities and schools as the child or young people move schools or move location. There also needs to be full engagement with, and the provision of, information and appropriate advice to the families and young people. Again, the information needs to be shared seamlessly in a secure and timely fashion to enable families, children and young people to input into their journey and opportunities as appropriate.

The success of the ALN code will depend on this sharing of specific information about meeting needs, so it’s important for schools, colleges, other providers and authorities to consider new ways in how they will address the challenges and include the views of young people, parents and carers in the process, and the necessary adaptations to their service.

The role of technology

With all the relevant information stored electronically, amending, updating, transferring and receiving case records and IDPs will be performed using synchronised common structured data via a central hub system. The easiest way to open the entire process to the multi professional eco system in a secure fashion is via dedicated portals; one each for parents/carers, schools/colleges, local authorities and professionals. This enables everyone who needs to contribute to the process to have self-service tailored access and visibility so they can more easily make their contributions.

Maintaining a single, uniquely structured ALN case record enables schools, colleges and authorities to use the holistic view of each child to establish effective support. They can operationally establish things like reminders so that they can review and assess each case in good time and strategically use the structured data to understand and better respond to patterns of unmet need in different groups.

Having a well-structured central record then plays into the accountable and legally enforceable element of the IDP, since a transparent record of all chronological activity within the IDP will be available on demand. Furthermore, where a child moves school or placement, or a young person goes to college or university, their IDP can be simply passed to prospective institutions at which they will be continuing their education. These institutions will have a full record of prospective students, enabling them to plan and facilitate offers for their joining in good time, increasing the opportunity and likelihood of meeting stated outcomes.

Security

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) necessitates robust handling of data such as IDPs and information surrounding young people. How does your school or authority store its data?

Working with a technology partner that can assist you with data hosting solutions is one option, since outsourcing hosting is one way of staying compliant with GDPR and means that you are storing data with a trusted partner. This means that you can store your data with the flexibility you need, on premise or in cloud, to give your teams real-time access to your data.

Aspects such as backups and downtime also need to be considered alongside security – if there’s a system outage, how long can you afford to be without your data and how much can you afford to lose? Scalable solutions offer greater flexibility in managing, storing and securing your data as well as working with a growing user population involved in the meeting of ALN support needs over many years.

Improving outcomes

Fundamentally, however, you need a technology solution and a technology partner that can empower your authority and the staff in schools, colleges and other providers in the education support eco system to achieve the fundamental objective of the ALN code – improving outcomes for children and young people with recognised ALN.

CACI’s IMPULSE Nexus software is being used by several Welsh councils to support this underlying objective, whilst also helping them to comply with data and security regulations by offering a fully managed hosting service. This helps to take the uncertainties out of data storage and management alongside providing an information management solution that facilitates the seamless recording, transfer and receiving of holistic case records and data with improved engagement and contribution from the people around the child.

IMPULSE Nexus fully supports the ALN code by operating a uniquely structured and synchronised common central hub case record and IDP with associated identification and support information. Further, the dedicated IMPUSE Nexus portals provide schools/colleges, parents/carers, professional and local authority staff a direct, relevant and focused online experience to collaborate on delivering the centralised IDP, with a fully auditable and transparent record of activity. This creates greater collaboration between professionals, providers and authorities, helping to realise the purpose of the ALN code in delivering better outcomes for children and young people.

If you would like any further information on how IMPULSE Nexus and how CACI’s dedicated team can support you with the implementation and future success of the ALN code in Wales, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/products/product/impulse-nexus

The concept of child trauma is a fluid one. There are the obvious examples that we can think of, those that social services and professionals deal with on a day-to-basis. Then there are the more intangible experiences of trauma, such as long-term neglect, structural and institutional trauma. The responses to behaviour by the professionals involved, be they teachers, youth offending teams or care workers, play a crucial role in the outcomes of these children. How can we work with conflict and challenge to join often disparate parts of our responses to create a roadmap to improved outcomes for all children?

CACI recently hosted an event exploring this topic. We were joined by a panel of domain experts: Alex Chard, director at YCTS; Shaun Brown, programme director at The Difference; Sonia Blandford, CEO at Achievement for All and; Marius Frank, strategic lead for E-learning development and youth justice at Achievement for All. The event was hosted by our Children & Young Person’s strategic director, Marc Radley.

How can we relate to children who have suffered lifetime trauma who find it hard to recover and build resilience?

“Understanding the history of these children is the responsibility of everyone concerned with their story,” says Alex. “We have to understand every child in youth offending services. At the moment we tend to ‘snapshot’ risk and tend to the most recent events. We need to look back further. We also need to assume that all children in the criminal justice system have suffered trauma. Gaining an understanding of early childhood abuse, especially something as corrosive as neglect, is a vital step in establishing relationships with these young people and building up their resilience.”

In what way do our system responses help or hinder recovery?

This was identified as an area for improvement by our panel. “There are so many layers in the systems that we operate and we tend to focus on what we know and understand,” explains Sonia. “These need to be an overarching view of every child; instead we have simplified information in silos. System responses, therefore, are a hindrance and can even exacerbate the difficulties for the child. We need to find ways to share our knowledge across the board and in order to learn and improve, we need to eliminate unhelpful routes and make things simple. At the moment there are too many layers.”

“Chronology and understanding of vulnerable children is hindered by misplaced fear of protecting privacy,” says Shaun. “Where access to past information is restricted, we can only see current information and there is no context. Understanding gets lost and many young people are left continually restarting their journeys.”

There is also the educational aspect in all of this, away from youth justice teams. “Assessment has failure built into it and this is a form of institutional trauma,” explains Sonia. “A lot of these children are always failing exams and tests and being told they’re bottom of the pile.”

“For some 14- and 15-year olds the first time they are diagnosed with severe educational disabilities is at screening by a youth offending team,” says Marius. “Why? Because of exclusions. This is driven by high stakes assessments and a results driven system.”

We are delighted to announce that CACI’s Cygnum workforce management software has been listed as an approved solution on the Health Systems Support Framework (HSSF). Operated by NHS England, the HSSF is a group of associated procurement frameworks to support delivery of integrated care, digitisation of the NHS and scaling of innovation by providing a marketplace of approved providers for NHS bodies to work with.

The addition of new workforce deployment service lines focus on eRostering, job planning and temporary staffing solutions. This will help the NHS become a truly modern employer by enabling evidence-based change and utilising best practice in workforce management, deployment and development of staff. The aim is that all workforce systems purchased and used by NHS organisations will meet national data and interoperability standards.

CACI’s Cygnum workforce management software is utilised by a number of public and third sector care organisations to help optimise and automate service delivery and support excellent patient care.

eRostering is core functionality in Cygnum, with the software allowing resources to be intelligently mapped to demand. Demand can be driven by patient needs, be this task-based from a patient care plan, or based on physical occupancy such as wards and rooms.

Cygnum ensures job plans are in place by recording assessments, training and competencies effectively and considering these against patient pathway demand and organisational needs.

Cygnum also meets the requirements of temporary staffing, ensuring an efficient and controlled process from first application, recording of training and competency, to staff rostering and self-management.

For more information on Cygnum, please click here.

As part of CACI’s ongoing efforts to enhance our service delivery to our customers, we’re delighted to announce that we have achieved the ISO 20000 service management certification. Our team has worked incredibly hard to align our practices with those outlined by ITIL, and the awarding of this certification is reward for all that hard work.

The ISO 20000 certification sits alongside our ISO 9001, 14001 and 27001 certifications and demonstrates CACI’s commitment to delivering the best possible service and ongoing support to our customers. To achieve the ISO 20000 standard, we have streamlined our processes and procedures and improved the ways we manage customer service. For example, we now use dashboards to monitor customer reviews and track feedback and internal improvement against these.

I’m delighted that we have been awarded the ISO 20000 certification,” says Matt Cooper, Senior Vice President at CACI. “It provides a further layer of assurance to our customers and inspires increased confidence in our solutions. Furthermore, it highlights the robust data security controls that we have in place, demonstrating the quality of, and ongoing commitment to, our products and services and best practices that we apply as a company.

CACI is delighted to confirm that it has been approved as a member of the RSSB (Rail Safety and Standards Board) as it seeks to strengthen its position as a 360-degree provider of products and services to the UK’s rail industry.

RSSB’s vision of a better, safer railway for everyone is shared by CACI. Via its multitude of products and services, CACI is strongly positioned to support the entire UK rail network in delivering this vision.

CACI provides products and services across the whole rail network to help deliver improvements in infrastructure management, optimise operational resilience and enhance the overall customer experience. Our portfolio of services includes understanding passenger numbers and putting in place solutions to facilitate passengers’ safe return to rail post-Covid, to understanding and driving efficiencies across the workforce employed to operate and maintain the network. CACI also supports operators through specialist consultancy, bespoke systems development and solution migration to aid operational efficiency.

We’re delighted to welcome CACI aboard as a member of RSSB.” says Chris Leech, Membership Development Manager UK + International at RSSB. “CACI’s products and services have lots to offer our vision of a better, safer railway in the UK and we’re excited to see what difference it can make to our industry. Efficiency, safety protocols and operational insight of services have been under the spotlight in recent years, so we welcome any technology provider that can help underpin improvements in our industry.

We’re delighted to have been approved a member of RSSB,” says Matt Cooper, senior vice president at CACI. “We firmly believe that our range of products and services are a great fit for the UK’s rail network. The rail industry, like everyone else, has been impacted by Covid, so there has never been a greater need to understand customer demand for rail services. Operational insight is vital, both to understand passenger journeys and to understand the challenges faced by those working on our rail network. By driving operational insight, we firmly believe that we can support the rail industry in delivering a better, safer railway for everyone.

Birmingham City Council has trained its 150th school as part of a city-wide school admissions digital transformation. The council is introducing a real-time online admissions portal, powered by the IMPULSE platform from CACI, and plans to have every school within the authority ready to use the system by the end of the year.

The new admissions portal was designed in collaboration with over 20 local schools and promises significant efficiency, quality and safeguarding benefits. It provides a shared, end-to-end dashboard for all parties – schools, council, parents, agencies – involved in the admissions process.

Information is updated in real-time and instantly accessible by all. Integrated and streamlined workflows allow decision-making processes which used to take weeks to be completed in minutes, allowing authorities to allocate staff and resources more efficiently.

The previous system saw all applications, rankings and correspondence managed manually, with the council using several disconnected offline spreadsheets to store information. Labour-intensive, slow, prone to human error, and rarely up to date, the process was very inefficient.

Sue Houghton, School IT/Data And Fair Access Manager, Birmingham City Council explains:

After engaging with several internal stakeholders, technical experts and management, Sue Houghton and her team secured funding from the council cabinet to work with CACI to create a bespoke, end-to-end, admissions process. The council also invited periodic feedback and testing from 20 different schools in the city as the system was designed and developed.

After taking delivery of the portal from CACI in late summer 2019, the council began a comprehensive training program for its 400 schools. The portal provides shared access to real-time admissions information, records and child status, visible to all parties and stakeholders.

Terry Lovegrove, Implementation Consultant, CACI explains:

The IMPULSE-based portal also helps school and council admissions teams better manage their workflow, by processing applications and referrals on an ongoing basis, rather than in batches. The automated system has been used to process over 14,000 primary and 16,000 secondary applications in the first six months of use.

Sue Houghton continues:

For the latest information on IMPULSE, please click here.

CACI is delighted to announce that Gwynedd and Anglesey Youth Justice Service has chosen ChildView as its information management system for youth justice services and for continuing to strategically enhance and evolve its vital services to vulnerable young people.

With Gwynedd and Anglesey deploying ChildView to operate and evaluate its services, it means that ChildView is now the regional specialist information management system of choice across Wales.

For the latest information on ChildView, please click here.

CACI is delighted to announce that Staffordshire Youth Offending Service (YOS) has chosen CACI’s ChildView youth justice information system to support, underpin and develop its important work with young people within its area.

ChildView will enable Staffordshire YOS to be fully compliant with YJB YJAF and statutory requirements ongoing as standard, whilst also being able to evaluate and enhance service impact. This will help improve journeys and outcomes for young people, through working more strategically as a team, implementing more efficient and effective processes and practices facilitated by information sharing and evidence-based learning.

Staffordshire has a team of approximately 80 staff in its youth offending service who will use ChildView to support vital specialist youth justice work and service delivery.

For the latest information on ChildView, please click here.

CACI is delighted to announce that Durham County Council (DCC) has selected ChildView as its information management system to underpin its youth justice services in the area. ChildView will enable Durham to strategically enhance and evolve its service delivery to vulnerable young people.

We selected ChildView as our new case management system, following a thorough tender process,” says Keith Forster, Strategic Manager at DCC. “We were impressed with the level of practice experience demonstrated by the team at CACI as well as the functionality of the system and breadth of built in reports available. The Team are excited to see the benefits that ChildView can bring to the Durham Youth Justice Service and how it helps to continue to improve outcomes for our young people.

We are delighted that Durham County Council has chosen ChildView as its youth justice information management system,” says Phil Lucy, Director of CACI’s Children and Young Persons division. “It’s testimony to the service that we provide to our customers, via our team of experienced practitioners and comprehensive youth justice software, that Durham County Council has chosen ChildView to support the ongoing practice and development of its services to vulnerable young people in the area.

Swansea County Council has chosen IMPULSE Nexus from CACI to transform its services by implementing the Additional Learning Needs (ALN) process across its area. The new ALN code and regulations are due to come into effect in Wales from September 2021, with the aim of supporting all children and young people who have identified additional learning needs, up to the age of 25.

Swansea is one of the first two local authorities to deploy IMPULSE Nexus to enable a local roll out of the ALN code of practice. For more information on how IMPULSE Nexus can support the Welsh ALN code, and your service, please click here.

The manifestation of trauma in adolescence occurs in a multitude of ways and there isn’t a single response to the expression of trauma. Identifying root causes can be difficult, with trauma hidden and experienced in complex ways, from obvious incidents such as violence and loss, through to long term neglect, structural and institutionalised trauma. The first step towards dealing with trauma, however, is universal – building healthy relationships and recognising what is going on with individuals to facilitate recovery and building resilience.

Identifying, assessing and mitigating the impact of child trauma was the theme of an event CACI hosted recently. At the heart of the panel conversation was how to relate to those young people who come into contact with youth offending services across the UK. How can youth justice workers, social workers and teachers get a joined up picture of each young person to create an understanding of their story to then relate to them?

“We all experience trauma and this is a fundamental part of our response to it,” says CACI Children & Young Person’s Services strategic director, Marc Radley. “Youth offending teams are the only ones able to complete a picture of the end results (in youth) and the stories that lead up to these.”

Is childhood trauma a universal ingredient in persistent youth offending? “We need to assume that all children in the criminal justice system have suffered trauma,” adds Dr. Alex Chard, director at YCTS. “We need to look back at each person’s story and relate to it. Early childhood abuse, especially something as corrosive as neglect, is a vital step in establishing relationships with these young people. Some factors often get missed, such as structural abuse, aspects such as poverty and the impact this has on a child, and social abuse, aspects such as discrimination.”

Joining the dots to paint a clear picture of each child’s experience is difficult. Information is often simplified, siloed and important context lost across the different agency process and practices that interact with a young person, from schools to social workers and youth offending teams.

“Many children have deep issues from the trauma they’ve experienced, and trauma is different for every child,” explains Marius Frank, strategic lead for E-learning development and youth justice at Achievement for All. “There’s not single solution or picture. Trauma exists in a spectrum, manifesting itself differently in each individual. We are seeing some amazing work engaging with young people, though. Moving away from a punishment first outlook to one of understanding is a step in the right direction. We need to continue moving to trauma informed practice from trauma awareness.”

Putting the trauma front and centre of the response to youth offending will enable youth offending teams to better understand the individual they are dealing with. “Research on family and that sense of belonging is crucial,” adds Sonia Blandford, CEO of Achievement for All. “How can we create that feeling of connection in the young person?”

It is often the case that trauma affected young people have experienced a continual carousel of rejection, which results in a deep mistrust of adults and, therefore, present very challenging behaviour seen in youth offending teams as they go about their work. “This is the compound impact of multiple trauma points,” says Shaun Brown, programme director at The Difference. “There are a broad range of institutional experiences in response to this.”

Finding a route to engaging with young people who have experienced complex trauma is incredibly challenging, but it is possible. By working to get a holistic view of each young person it is possible to piece together story and begin to understand how they got to where they are. Understanding leads to positive relationships with workers to reduce offending. Further, when these stories are made visible via the right structured qualitative and quantitative recording and reporting, whole services gain insight and learning. This is where youth offending services create value and provide vital information about where and how to target resources and monitor future impact.

There are signs that local systems are moving in the right direction and youth offending service partnerships are at the forefront of this. They are building local knowledge, experience and understanding of the impact that trauma is having in young people’s lives. Bridging that experience into other agencies and organisations involved can restore healthy relationships with these young people and protect future generations, but only if this effort is continually monitored.

One of the cornerstones of helping young people who have experienced trauma is establishing supportive environments and relationships in which they can begin to address their adverse experiences. For the majority of young people who have experienced trauma, there is a lack of trust in adults and services around them, so establishing these environments and these relationships is not only extremely challenging, but extremely important.

The topic of establishing these support tools was discussed at our recent panel event, identifying, assessing and mitigating the impact of child trauma.

One of the issues identified in establishing positive relationships with these young people was the number of case workers that can become involved in their story. “This goes to the heart of the relationship and the view of the young person themselves and their experiences of the different agencies involved in their life,” says Sonia Blandford, CEO at Achievement for All. “I’ve seen cases where there are as many as 12 professionals involved with a young person, each one with a different opinion and a different attitude.

“If we can change the behaviour of the adults we will improve outcomes for the young person. Everyone needs to be singing from the same song sheet. A multitude of approaches is to the detriment of the young person and our overall response to their trauma. Families, too, will kick back against the system as it’s not helping them – we need to reduce the number of people involved with each young person.”

So where, ultimately, should the responsibility lie? “We need corporate visibility of young people in the youth justice pathway,” says Marius Frank, strategic lead for E-learning development and youth justice at Achievement for All. “There have been huge changes in outcomes for looked after children when the responsibility for them has been moved to local authorities. If responsibility lies in one place, we reduce the risk of fragmentation of information on these children.”

This is a point that Alex Chard, director at YCTS, agrees with. “It is intentional that school records are kept separately,” he says. “Records should be joined up, but there are obstacles to achieving this, not least the fact that there are a number of young people known across different systems and this isn’t being recognised, which is creating more risk.

“We need to look at families and inter-generational trauma. We gain a different level of empathy when we care to understand a young person’s history.“

Understanding, therefore, is central to enabling fair access for these young people and establishing positive environments and relationships with them. “Young people who are ‘difficult to like’ consistently experience rejection,” adds Shaun Brown, programme director at The Difference. “We are conditioned as human beings to reject experiences that cause us discomfort, which goes some way to explaining why these young people are the way they are.

“Building and sustaining relationships with these young people has to be front and centre of our response and we need to monitor what this achieves within our institutions. This needs to be achieved through the layers of the system.”

Establishing relationships with trauma affected young people can be extremely challenging but understanding where our response to it has gone awry can help to put in place in effective building blocks for improving outcomes going forward. A unified system response, with a consistent approach from the professionals involved, will go a long way to ensuring fair access to supportive environments and relationships for these young people.

“In 2011 I was asked to head an EBD (emotional and behavioural difficulties) school and quickly realised that the skills I’d acquired over more than 20 years as a teacher didn’t work – I needed to re-skill and re-skill quickly.” Rich Berry has over 32 years’ experience as a teacher but decided to focus upon improving outcomes for children whose behaviour sits outside of the acceptable ‘norm’, having come to garner a better understanding of why difficult children are difficult.

The school he led was judged to be failing. “I realised that we needed a fresh approach,” explains Rich. “So, I built a team with experience in working with young people who had experienced trauma and we started to investigate neuroscience and the impact that trauma has on brain development in children. Trauma can manifest itself in so many different ways, but we commonly see the emotional struggle emerge in the form of challenging behaviour – this is the only way children have of communicating their struggle; it is not the conscious deliberate act that many assume.

“Through implementing a therapeutic curriculum at the school, our Ofsted judgments began to head in the right direction. The emphasis moved away from a traditional school discipline model and I personally played a more prevalent role in the education process, as an emotionally available adult, always interacting with the students and looking at how we could improve their outcomes.”

After nine years as head of two schools, Rich took early retirement in 2019 to establish his consultancy, Rich Berry Educational Consultancy. He is also co-chair of the charity, Engage in Their Future, which specialises in providing support to teachers and schools for children with SEMH (social, emotional and mental health) challenges. His work covers the UK, with Engage in Their Future working across more than 90 specialist schools and children’s homes.

“I also qualified as a mental health first aid trainer,” explains Rich. “Identifying and preventing mental health issues is a key challenge in helping the children I work with. Early prevention is always the best route, so being able to spot the signs and help them to get the help that they need can be hugely beneficial. I used the mantra with my staff that we were agents for social change. By helping young people overcome trauma they are less likely to suffer with mental health problems in later life.

“In all settings young people’s ability to learn and develop resilience depends on the approaches taken by their teachers, parents, sports coaches and youth workers. It’s a responsibility I put at the centre of everything I do.”

CACI is delighted to be partnering with Rich to provide his consultancy services to local authorities and associated youth justice and education workers. As part of this, and to promote trauma-informed practice and challenge preconceptions around children displaying disruptive behaviour, CACI will be arranging sessions for customers and as part of our tender process.

“Much of my work, whether with parents, teachers or school communities, focuses on challenging behaviour policies,” says Rich of the consultancy he provides. “Teachers feel disarmed if you take away their ability to sanction pupils in a punitive way. What I challenge them to do is to look at poor behaviour not as a deliberate act of defiance, but as a communication. The fact that we struggle to read that communication should not mean that we go ahead and punish. A punitive system tends to do one of two things; either the child’s behaviour continues and deteriorates further, or the child complies and their message is missed, which can lead to a mental health issue in later life. Stats tell us that 50% of adult mental health issues are embedded by 14 and 75% by 17 years of age.

“You can’t argue with neuroscience. There has been a massive increase in our understanding of brain growth as scanning techniques have developed. I use this understanding to develop everyone else’s understanding that trauma causes the emotional (limbic) brain to be underdeveloped. I develop peoples’ understanding of trauma. I then help them to understand that the body’s natural fear systems kick in and what we very often see as challenging behaviour, is just a fear response.”

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Mitigating the impact of trauma in young people is central to helping them build resilience, trust and relationships. This starts with the professionals they come into contact with, from youth justice workers to social workers and teachers. Keeping track of this process is vital to it succeeding, but how does the existing system response across the professionals involved help or hinder it?

We recently hosted a panel discussion exploring how we can identify, assess and mitigate the impact of child trauma in young offenders. You can watch a replay here. One of the central themes was examining the role of the systems that the various professional bodies involved with a young offender have in place. Is there sufficient sharing of knowledge and experience? Is there a robust framework in place that puts the young person first?

With each body relying upon its own system to underpin its support of a young person, this can make things tricky, argues Sonia Blandford, CEO at Achievement for All. “There are so many layers in the systems and we tend to focus on what we know and understand,” she says. “There used to be an overarching record of every child – now we have information in silos. This means that our system responses are a hindrance.”

Siloed information and little shared understanding makes joining the dots in a multi-agency scenario very challenging. “In order to improve we need to keep it simple,” adds Sonia. “At the moment there are too many layers.”

It’s a point that Shaun Brown, programme director at The Difference, agrees with. “We need in place a chronology and understanding of children, especially vulnerable ones who will come into contact with youth offending services,” he says. “This is hindered by a misplaced fear of protecting privacy. When we restrict access to past information, we see only current information devoid of context. This leaves vulnerable children moving in and out of scope with their chronology becoming disconnected. When this happens, understanding gets lost and we are left constantly restarting the journey of each child. The way things are at the moment, the system response is geared towards single threads of need.”

Painting a clear picture and providing a holistic view to the professionals involved would represent a major step forward in improving outcomes for those young people in contact with youth offending services.

A system response which hinders the process of improving outcomes for young people in the youth justice system feeds into the wider notion around institutional trauma, something which many vulnerable children experience in the existing school system.

“The notion of assessments has failure built into it.” argues Sonia. “We need to consider this carefully as assessments are constantly telling a lot of children that they are always bottom of the pile. That represents institutional trauma.”

Another aspect to the institutional response to these children is the school process of fixed term and permanent exclusions. “For some 14- and 15-year olds, the first time that are being diagnosed with severe educational disabilities is during the screening process with a youth offending team. Why? Because of school exclusions,” says Marius Frank, strategic lead for E-learning development and youth justice at Achievement for All. “This is driven by high stakes assessments and a results driven system. There is hope, however, since schools can build out different systems and curricula for their children. They can justify this to Ofsted and make a change.”

A more joined up, integrated approach across the various systems that young people meet would help. “I’m a big advocate of youth offending teams,” says Alex Chard, director at YCTS. “They host a wealth of information so can pick up on many different factors. They can recognise the history of a child. The number of looked after children in the criminal justice system tells its own story of societal discrimination.”

Youth offending teams are ideally positioned to provide valuable insights to other areas of the overarching system that looks after and monitors children. All professionals and bodies are doing their best, but a more integrated approach would ultimately benefit the children involved by helping to improve their outcomes.

The concept of child trauma is a fluid one. There are the obvious examples that we can think of, those that social services and professionals deal with on a day-to-basis. Then there are the more intangible experiences of trauma, such as long-term neglect, structural and institutional trauma. The responses to behaviour by the professionals involved, be they teachers, youth offending teams or care workers, play a crucial role in the outcomes of these children. How can we work with conflict and challenge to join often disparate parts of our responses to create a roadmap to improved outcomes for all children?

CACI recently hosted an event exploring this topic. We were joined by a panel of domain experts: Alex Chard, director at YCTS; Shaun Brown, programme director at The Difference; Sonia Blandford, CEO at Achievement for All and; Marius Frank, strategic lead for E-learning development and youth justice at Achievement for All. The event was hosted by our Children & Young Person’s strategic director, Marc Radley.

How can we relate to children who have suffered lifetime trauma who find it hard to recover and build resilience?

“Understanding the history of these children is the responsibility of everyone concerned with their story,” says Alex. “We have to understand every child in youth offending services. At the moment we tend to ‘snapshot’ risk and tend to the most recent events. We need to look back further. We also need to assume that all children in the criminal justice system have suffered trauma. Gaining an understanding of early childhood abuse, especially something as corrosive as neglect, is a vital step in establishing relationships with these young people and building up their resilience.”

In what way do our system responses help or hinder recovery?

This was identified as an area for improvement by our panel. “There are so many layers in the systems that we operate and we tend to focus on what we know and understand,” explains Sonia. “These need to be an overarching view of every child; instead we have simplified information in silos. System responses, therefore, are a hindrance and can even exacerbate the difficulties for the child. We need to find ways to share our knowledge across the board and in order to learn and improve, we need to eliminate unhelpful routes and make things simple. At the moment there are too many layers.”

“Chronology and understanding of vulnerable children is hindered by misplaced fear of protecting privacy,” says Shaun. “Where access to past information is restricted, we can only see current information and there is no context. Understanding gets lost and many young people are left continually restarting their journeys.”

There is also the educational aspect in all of this, away from youth justice teams. “Assessment has failure built into it and this is a form of institutional trauma,” explains Sonia. “A lot of these children are always failing exams and tests and being told they’re bottom of the pile.”

“For some 14- and 15-year olds the first time they are diagnosed with severe educational disabilities is at screening by a youth offending team,” says Marius. “Why? Because of exclusions. This is driven by high stakes assessments and a results driven system.”

How do we enable fair access to supportive environments and relationships?

“We need to look at families and intergenerational trauma,” says Alex. “We gain a different level of empathy when we come to understand a child’s history. For this, we need joined up records, but there are obstacles to achieving this, not least children being known to various professionals across different systems. Where this isn’t recognised it creates more risk.”

Shaun adds; “children who are ‘difficult to like’ have consistently experienced rejection. Building and sustaining relationships with them has to be front and centre of the response. We then need to monitor how that works within our institutions and responses through the layers of the system.”

“We see too many cases where there are too many professionals involved with each young person, sometimes as many as 12,” explains Sonia. “That’s 12 different people coming in with different opinions and attitudes. If we can change the behaviour of the adults, we can improve the outcomes for the children. Everyone needs to be singing from the same song sheet. Families will rail against an inconsistent system that doesn’t help them – we need to reduce the number of people involved with a young person.” Although, this means we must also value and support those workers who step in.

How do we work with these understandings about risk and vulnerability?

“We need to get children out of the criminal justice system who shouldn’t be there,” suggests Alex. “Only dangerous children should be in there. We could then reduce the number of children going through youth offending teams and this will result in a better system for the most vulnerable children in society.”

“There are profound lessons to be learned,” says Marius. “We need to re-examine why children are in the youth justice system. We need to improve protection and early identification. We need to work around the young people as early as possible.“

“For all that, there’s an awful lot of good work going on and there’s clear evidence that a child first approach is working.”

Want to know more? Watch a recording of this event below