Support Planning – how to measure and maximise effectiveness with Case Manager
Many of our customers offer a broad support service to their clients. This ranges from charities, whose purpose is to support those who are vulnerable, have money problems, or require support, to Housing Associations, who offer support on a range of issues to their tenants.
These support services include, for example:
Domestic violence
Services for the elderly
Supporting vulnerable adults
Employment
Homelessness
Sheltered accommodation
Benefit and debt advice
There are two key issues which our customers have reported they are facing:
How to measure and report outcomes related to such a broad range of issues, at both an individual and organisational level; and
How to demonstrate performance to stakeholders and funding authorities to secure, or increase the levels of funding for these services, especially in an environment where competition for funding is becoming even more fierce.
To help our customers resolve these issues we have now developed the Support Planning features of Case Manager. This allows the easy completion and recording of the following support service related functions:
Needs and risk assessments and reviews
Produce and progress support plans with tracked outcomes, risks, actions and goals
Numerical scoring system for recording the client and support worker’s view of the progress towards an outcome
Traffic light system to highlight the areas of greatest need or those clients at the highest risk
Comprehensive range of charts and reports for measuring outcomes, distance travelled and progress
Management of support services including prioritised waiting lists, easy access to the records for all current service users and the management of associated funding contracts
Support Planning enables case workers to baseline an individual’s needs, agree a support plan and track their progress. Tracking the distance travelled, on a standard scale, means that the contribution of your service to your clients’ lives can be easily measured at an individual, service or organisation level; helping you to secure or increase ongoing funding contracts.
Measuring and reporting Social Value
An integral part of Support Planning is the Social Return on Investment tool (SROI). This provides commissioners and funders with accurate data on the effectiveness of their grants and funds. It can be used to highlight poor performing services in addition to those services which are performing well, in order to inform strategic decisions on where to focus effort and funds.
These measures have been developed to work alongside ‘standard’ measures of Social Return on Investment, for example those developed by the Cabinet Office. For more information on this, see their Guide to Social Return on Investment, which you can download here.
Customers using the support planning features have told us that they find it much easier to report on their activities in a consistent, reliable way which clearly demonstrates the impact of their activities on their target communities.
Jane Greenacre, Carer Support and Training Manager for VOCAL, an organisation which provides support and advice and works with carers on a one-to-one basis to help identify the issues affecting them and achieve the best possible outcome for carers, said:
“Case Manager has made a phenomenal difference to what we can achieve as an organisation. Within a few short months IIZUKA helped us to completely review our processes and configured a system which was simple and intuitive. Reporting is much simpler too and we can analyse data on an individual or outcome basis, which is really important for reporting back to the bodies that provide our funding.”
If you’d like a demonstration of Case Manager Support Planning Edition, or simply a quick chat to see if it could support your work, give us a call on 0121 212 2030, or email us at info@iizuka.co.uk.
