Together with Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and Leeds City Council, we undertook extensive user-centred research, involving interviews, workshops, consultation and surveys with families, social workers, team leaders, senior leadership and more.
We found that social workers want access to the contact details of the lead practitioner of a case from other services (police, housing, schools and adult social care) and basic information on when the service was last involved with the family.
Using this information, we built the Family Context web app, making sure to focus on it being simple and intuitive to use. We worked with the Information Commissioner’s Office to develop a data protection impact assessment, which could be re-used by other local authorities. This was in response to insight from frontline professionals who say that with existing systems, information is old, logging in is hard, or navigation difficult.
It can be hard for local authority data and information governance teams to feel comfortable with personal identifiable information for vulnerable cohorts. To maximise the value and scale of our work to other local authorities, we worked with the Information Commissioner’s Office to develop a data protection impact assessment, which could be re-used by other local authorities.