Cygnum Archives

How Cygnum supports the delivery of Shared Lives in South Wales

Posted on: 25 March 2025

To begin with, the NHS’s description of Shared Lives: “Shared lives schemes support adults with learning disabilities, mental health problems or other needs that make it harder for them to live on their own. The schemes match someone who needs care with an approved carer. The carer shares their family and community life, and gives care and support to the person with care needs. Some people move in with their shared lives carer, while others are regular daytime visitors. Some combine daytime and overnight visits.” Caerphilly County Borough Council leads a Shared Lives partnership of eight, comprising six other local authorities and one health board.

All care offered on the scheme takes place in the carer’s home. It ranges from daytime care, which might mean a couple of hours during which the person with support needs visits the carer’s home, through to one arrangement in Caerphilly where the carer has been providing full time support for over 30 years. Shared Lives relies upon the commitment of ordinary people from within the community who are trained, assessed and approved by the scheme to provide care to those who need it.

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

How Shared Lives operated before

Prior to going live with CACI’s Cygnum solution in 2024, Caerphilly’s Shared Lives scheme used a system that was designed for it at its inception in 2011. “It was a standalone, bespoke system,” says Martin. “It served us well over the years but there was no scope to develop it. It had been designed and built by a freelancer who had moved on. The system started to fail, which prompted us to look at other options.” The scheme needed new software that could handle the key components of tracking and managing carers, matching their availability and skills to people who need support and then paying the carers correctly for the placement.

Why Cygnum?

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

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

How the Shared Lives team got up and running with Cygnum

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

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

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

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

The role of Cygnum in Caerphilly’s Shared Lives scheme

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

Another support role that Cygnum performs is in calculating pay to be allocated to carers within the scheme. This varies by carer, depending on factors such as how long they have someone with them, be it for a few hours or more permanently, and the type of care required. Caerphilly can utilise Cygnum’s customisable rules engine to ensure that pay is accurate, on time and flexible to evolving requirements and methods of calculation.

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

What’s next for Cygnum and Shared Lives?

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

“We will be training the whole team on reports next. At the moment it’s a manual process whereby the team have to go to our administrators to access historical information which is relevant to the referrals and carers they are working with. If the administrators are busy, this slows the process down. Once we’re up and running with reporting in Cygnum, this will take them a couple of minutes and they can self-serve. This will improve our response time and increase efficiency.”

Conclusion

“Working with CACI has been a real pleasure,” concludes Martin. “The project ran as smoothly as I could’ve hoped and the communication from CACI was good throughout.

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

For more information on the Shared Lives scheme and how it supports people, please click here.

For more information on Cygnum, please click here.

Automating competency management: effective, efficient, accurate

Posted on: 23 May 2024

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.

Cygnum from CACI used by TfL as competency management solution for London Underground drivers

Posted on: 10 May 2023

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/

The importance of communication in rail safety

Posted on: 24 February 2023

A collision between a train and tractor in Kisby highlights the importance of training, briefing and communicating with all workers and operators to enhance rail safety.

Setting out safety guidelines and effectively communicating them with the workforce is paramount to creating a safe and accountable working environment. If staff aren’t briefed on safety procedures and processes whilst conducting their work, then mistakes are likely to happen. This was brought into focus on 19 August 2021 when a freight train collided with agricultural machinery being towed by a tractor at 04:10. The incident happened at Kisby, at a user worked crossing. The train was travelling at 66mph. So, how did this happen?

According to the report released in October 2022 by RAIB (Rail Accident Investigation Branch), the accident occurred because the driver of the tractor didn’t telephone the signal operator to check that it was okay to cross. Rather, they assumed that it was safe to look at the tracks to determine whether or not a train was approaching. With the train travelling at such speed, they didn’t see it, resulting in the collision.

Firstly, the incident could have been significantly worse. The train driver sustained minor injuries in the collision, with the driver of the tractor uninjured. From a collateral perspective, the locomotive and one wagon derailed, whilst the rail infrastructure sustained significant damage.

The cost of repairing the infrastructure, whilst not noted in the RAIB report, will have been significant, whilst there’s also the time the section of rail will have been out of action for to take into consideration. The stretch of line of was out of action for four days whilst the train was recovered and the tracks were repaired. This will have resulted in delayed and cancelled services.

A Class 66 locomotive, the type of locomotive involved in the accident here, has a value of around £1.5m. This is based on GBRf spending £50m on a fleet of 37 such locomotives in 2014. It’s fair to assume the repair bill won’t have been cheap.

The short-term planning, to assign engineers at short notice to track repairs, will have taken them away from other projects on the rail, resulting in other projects being affected by this incident. This, too, will have had cost implications, as well as creating scheduling issues for engineering workers, since their rosters will have had to be re-jigged.

It’s clear that the cost, time and resource implications of this incident were vast. That’s before taking into consideration just how much worse the incident could have been.

In its report, RAIB notes that the driver of the tractor wasn’t aware of the requirement to phone the signal operator to check it was safe to cross. They had not been briefed. RAIB concludes that this is most likely a result of the land owner on either side of the crossing failing to brief users of the crossing in a way which resulted in its correct use. Rail staff were unaware of this until shortly before the incident.

So, significant upheaval, in terms of time and cost, was created because of a simple lack of communication and safety briefings. How can such a situation be avoided?

Having the ability to evidence that training has been delivered, briefings have been given and that communication is recorded, is a major step in the right direction. The RAIB report notes that they were unable to find evidence of any call from the tractor driver to the signal operator, nor that the tractor driver had been briefed on the need to do so. Creating an evidence trail of such activities enables organisations to determine where failings have occurred and rectify them, preferably before an accident happens.

The technology exists to underpin such processes. Keeping a robust record of training and briefings can help to ensure that incidents such as this are avoided. And they are a lot cheaper than repairing a Class 66 locomotive.

Complete workforce management solutions can support your training, competency management, recruitment and scheduling. This helps organisations to keep a complete audit trail of activities, ensuring that tasks, such as safety briefings, are conducted. Human error, however, is inevitable, so they can also assist in the short-term rescheduling of staff to emergency activities such as track repair in the wake of such incidents.

Operating the UK’s rail infrastructure is a complex process which requires the monitoring of several moving and independent parts, as this incident highlights. It involves everyone from land owners to rail operators and anyone who needs to cross the tracks. Keeping tabs on the communication with all parties is difficult. Having a system in place to record communications and aspects such as safety briefing enables operators to keep track of who needs to know what and when.

The cost of not having such a system in place can run beyond the financial. The incident at Kisby could easily have been a fatal one. Is it acceptable that such an avoidable incident occurred through simple ignorance of the required process for safely crossing a railway track? The process can be managed and alerts can be created to ensure that everyone receives the briefings they need to receive. The cost of not doing this can be far greater than the cost of implementing the software that helps to avoid such incidents.

For more information on CACI’s Cygnum software, which helps organisations to gain a holistic view of their workforce and processes, please visit: caci.co.uk/cygnum