Carers in Bedfordshire
Winner – Transforming With Digital
About the Charity
Unpaid family carers are the people in our community who look after someone who could not manage on their own. This could be a parent with dementia, a child with additional needs or a spouse with a disability.
Carers in Bedfordshire supports more than 10,500 unpaid family carers of all ages and circumstances. Its team works holistically to support carers, focussing on the areas they say they are struggling with the most. This might be their physical or mental health, their finances or making time for themselves. CIB’s skilled and experienced staff use a coaching model to empower carers to take action themselves, while providing emotional support and reassurance. The charity also offers a programme of activities and peer support groups that bring carers together, along with a variety of specialist services such as mental health and well-being services, benefits and welfare advice.
Charity number: 1135507 | www.CarersInBeds.org.uk
Social Services | England – East Midlands| 26-100 paid staff
What the Board Achieved
At the beginning of 2020, the charity undertook a strategic review that identified key challenges and opportunities, and the board set an ambitious plan to double the number of carers the charity supports – aiming for 12,000 by the end of 2024. Leading this process, trustees considered how the organisation might meet such a bold goal including referral pathways, increasing capacity within services and exploring alternative support models. Through a process of internal and external analysis, the board identified four key areas that it wanted to focus on: (1) reducing the reliance on paper-based administration processes, which was restricting the amount of resource that could be allocated to frontline services; (2) better utilising the data available to inform resource allocation; (3) using its data internally and externally to target clients from under-represented groups; (4) and improving the charity’s digital support services to meet the modern expectations and needs of its clients.
The board responded with a digital transformation plan that was developed, endorsed, budgeted for and implemented by the trustees (and supported by a trustee subcommittee). The objective was to streamline processes and utilise digital technologies where they could better serve the charity’s mission. With this clearly defined objective, the board commissioned a volunteer to examine the charity’s processes from an external perspective and tasked the senior management team to identify processes that were administration heavy. Though this process, the board created a digital transformation plan that had three main areas of focus:
- Registration process: With more than 150 people registering with the charity every month, a robust system for identifying those most in need was critical for improved service delivery. The charity automated its registration, welcome and triage process so that beneficiaries most in need were identified and spoken to in a timely manner.
- Website development: The charity invested time (six months) and resources to redesign its website with input from beneficiaries.
- Data reporting: The charity built live data visualisation dashboards so that staff members, trustees and funding bodies could view up-to-date performance indicators and impact data on demand. This significantly reduced the amount of time spent building reports, and the simplicity of the tool allowed the charity to transform its processes so that data and evidence better informed decision making at all levels.
The digital transformation project has improved outcomes for beneficiaries and increased efficiency in how the charity serves them. Staff are able to spend 33% more time on frontline services, and the amount of time spent on administration processes has decreased by 59%. A new intranet and digital file sharing system has improved internal communications.Communication has improved externally as well – registrations have increased by 60% and more carers are able to access support through the improved website, live chat and new text message capabilities; data suggests engagement with the new website has improved by 198%. With improvements in the way the charity collects, analyses and shares data, staff and trustees are better informed and able to spot trends in beneficiary needs, identify under-represented communities, track outcomes, and communicate to its stakeholders with greater accuracy and transparency.
In the long-term, the board has used what it learned during this digital transformation to continue its journey. It has increased its resiliency through skills audits, a training programme, the development of a data-driven approach to decision making, and better oversight, which will contribute to further learning and better governance in other key areas. It also continues to invest in the digital resources – such as new tools and recruiting new staff members with relevant expertise – that will allow the charity to continue to improve and grow as an organisation.
