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The supporting people assistant - spa
is software to help you, as a service provider, support vulnerable
people and report to local and national government about the support you
provide. It enables the providers of Supporting
People (SP) similar services, to record, and report on,
essential information related to their customers reliably, efficiently and
cost-effectively. It enables analysis, measurement and customising, supporting
both accommodation-based services and the shift towards floating support.
Using spa you can be confident and consistent in
the information you hold about your customers, allowing you to concentrate on
guiding them towards a better quality of life. It enables you to adapt to the
changing needs of service users. Your use of spa will
advance you towards the Supporting People objective: “services that are
of a high, quality, strategically planned, cost effective and complement care
services”.
By using spa to understand the customer’s needs
and profile, provision can be extended to, and refined for, a wider range of
customers: gaps in provision can be identified by monitoring customer
characteristics.
"spa helps Homeless Action in Barnet improve the service we
provide to our clients, allowing us to build up a profile of a client's needs
and to go about addressing those needs through relevant support plans. We are
then able to provide evidence of the work we are doing to the DCLG, the London
Borough of Barnet and to other funders and interested parties, particularly in
relation to outcome monitoring. Reviews with the administering authority are
conducted looking at spa or printed output from spa. We expect to get more
support contracts as a result of the use of this software."
Joe Lee, Director Homeless Action in Barnet
book a test drive of spa
spa is the easiest to use, most
accountable, lowest risk, lowest cost system available for Supporting People
providers. The advantages of spa are:
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Low costs of ownership and support of a web-based system.
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Easy recording of information about customers, particularly about face-to-face
contact, for example in a day centre, and service outcomes.
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Customising your efforts to the needs of the customer, related or unrelated to
accommodation or tenure.
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Effective reporting to local and national government, and within your
organisation about services, customers, cases and outcomes.
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Reduced risk to your organisation thanks to the structured and audited storage
of information.
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Clear and effective outcome monitoring.
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spa is a web-based service where you can hold and
analyse your own information separately from other providers. This
technology also supports the extension of access to as many users as can access
an organisation’s intranet.
Rather than being installed on individual user’s computers, spa
is installed on the provider’s intranet or can be accessible over the internet.
The result is lower costs to own and support, as well as a system based on
up-to-date technology likely to be consistent with your organisation’s
technical strategy.
Outcome monitoring is an integral part of spa allowing clear representations of
a customer's progress.
The recording of customer contact and basic customer information is quick and
straightforward in spa: it is geared towards the easy recording of information
by front-line staff, for example in day centres, and enables a full picture of
a customer to be built up.
You can tailor your efforts in response to the individual needs of a vulnerable
person, not conditional on accommodation or tenure, and helping ensure the
cost-effective delivery of client-led support of outstanding quality. An
example of the type of service benefiting is home-based floating support for a
teenage parent.
Reporting is supported to all interested parties, starting with the submission
of Client Record Forms to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Quarterly returns can be provided to administering authorities and internal
reporting is available, particularly on support planning, enabling continuous
monitoring and improvement of your processes. Baseline measurements can be
established on existing services.
The risks of your organisation are better managed in the structured storage of
data. You can be confident in accurate and timely reporting as well as having
secure, audit-trailed repository for all your customer-related information.
TMWK was founded specifically to maintain and support software for supporting
people: the integrity of your systems is supported by the integrity of our
company.
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spa is customer-oriented, enabling
you to record basic customer details as well as those required for submission
to the Department for Communities and Local Government for the Supporting People
programme (as a Client Record Form). A profile of the customer is maintained in
the system as well as that customer’s relationship with one or more services
and professional contacts.
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All customer contact can be quickly and easily noted. As well as having a
record of all contact with a customer, a picture of the amount of time a member
of staff spends on this case, or on a service, can be built up. The needs of a
particular customer can be better understood given the accumulation of contact
information. It is up to the member of staff recording the contact to determine
whether that information is to be made public outside of the an organisation’s
spa-using community. A view of all customer contact related to a
service is also available in a journal.
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The details of services are fully configurable. In general,
administration functions allow spa to be refined
to your needs as a service provider.
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Support plans are set up as a coherent series of interventions
towards a defined objective: outcomes can be monitored along the way. Where
support plans exist on paper, they can be scanned in and used as a reference.
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There are three main types of report in spa.
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To the DCLG through the
Joint Centre for Scottish Housing Research (JCSHR), which manages the
analysis of clients in the Supporting People programme, including Client
Record Form data.
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To the administering authority on the contract with the provider.
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To management internally, notably on the coverage and effectiveness of support
planning and on outcomes.
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spa can be used over the Internet or it can be installed on an
organisation's own servers for use on an intranet.
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Internet version
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The annual price is agreed with an organisation in advance based on expected
usage.
The rate of pricing is £250 per user (minimum of 30 users) with a 20% initial
setup fee. Thus for 30 or less users spa would
cost £9000 for the first year then £7500 per annum thereafter.
The annual fee covers licensing, hosting, upgrades and system maintenance
including backups as well as reasonable levels of telephone and email support.
tmwk would be happy to provide an indicative price based on an organisation's
anticipated use of spa. We would also be happy to
migrate existing data on a consultancy basis.
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| Intranet version
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Indicative prices for the
intranet version, dependent on anticipated levels of use, can be provided on
request.
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