COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2016
02
APPLICATION FORM
Please refer to the ‘2016 Guidance for Applicants’
before completing this application form.
The application form is split over four sections. It is up to you to decide the content and length of each section, but your application must not exceed three pages in total (excluding the cover pages).
Please ensure that your application covers the key criteria that we are looking for and is effectively presented. Any questions relating to your application or the submission process should be directed to or 0131 474 9275.
The deadline for submission of entries is 5pm on FRIDAY 23 October 2015.
Submitting Your Application Form
Please use our online application portal to submit this application form.
PLEASE PROVIDE SOME DETAILS ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION:
CATEGORY APPLIED FOR / Category 1 – Service Innovation & ImprovementPROJECT NAME
(as you wish to see it published) / Dumfries and Galloway PARD (Persons at Risk Database) Project
LEAD ORGANISATION / Dumfries and Galloway Council
DEPARTMENT/TEAM / Resilience Team
PARTICIPANT NAMES OR PARTNER ORGANISATIONS / D&G Council ( Social Work Services, Business & Technology Solutions, Care for People Team) / Police Scotland
NHS Dumfries and Galloway
CONTACT NAME / David Gurney
CONTACT DETAILS / 01387 260002 /
CAN WE PUBLISH THIS APPLICATION FORM ON OUR WEBSITE? / YES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / In one short paragraph please describe this project is about, what it has achieved, and why it is delivering excellence.
Please note that we may use this summary for promotional purposes on our website and elsewhere.
The Person’s at Risk Database (PARD) is a ground-breaking and award winning project which seeks to protect and prioritise the most vulnerable in our region during times of disruption. The system provides Responders real time access to the location of vulnerable people during emergencies, saving valuable time in identifying priorities and deploying resources to where they are needed most. The project is unique in Scotland, in using multiple data sources, and has been highlighted by Scottish Government Resilience Division as an example of best practice, and one which they hope to take forward on a national basis. In September 2015 PARD won the prestigious Emergency Planning Society - Resilience Innovation of the Year Award.
PLANNING / What is your project about, and why is it important? What are you aiming to achieve, and how does this fit with the bigger picture? Does it tackle the issues that matter most to your community or your organisation?
Emergencies and disruption can be unpredictable in timing, scale and location which provide challenges for those responsible for the delivery of essential and emergency services. PARD provides an effective solution to aid responders in the identification and prioritisation of vulnerable people affected by disruption. The PARD system makes a significant difference in the time it takes to identify and provide support to the most vulnerable in our community, and helps to minimise any distress and sense of isolation felt by those impacted by an emergency.
The PARD project set out to provide;
· location-based tools to easily identify where persons at risk reside for any given area;
· reporting tools to generate and email PDF reports of both maps and lists;
· an agreed classification scheme to categorise persons by ‘type of risk’;
· effective protocols for sharing information amongst Council Services and Partners
· access to multiple datasets to maximise the opportunities to identify those at risk
The project helps the Council and Partner Agencies in terms of commitments and responsibilities specific to organisational priorities, statutory duties and the need to maintain a range of support and critical service provision to those who need it most. One of Dumfries and Galloway Councils four Priorities is to “Protect our most vulnerable people” with related commitments to “Ensure our older or vulnerable people receive the care and support they need” and to “Keep our communities safe”, and these factors are key drivers for the PARD project.
Dumfries and Galloway is widespread, largely rural in character, with a widely dispersed population and is regularly subject to disruption which can result in the displacement/ isolation of sections of the population or disruption to essential service provision, such as home care visits or loss of public utility supplies. Learning from previous events highlighted that responders were not to identify those who may need to be prioritised during disruption, particularly out of office hours when those who would have routine access to these records may be unavailable. Having the system in place enables authorised staff to be able to access information without delay, thereby reducing the timescales for provision of support.
The system was developed with the aid of £43,000 funding from Scottish Government, and has minimal ongoing costs, as the systems utilises existing information, and an existing GIS framework, it has proved to be a low cost solution.
The project has been sponsored by Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Resilience Team, but is the result of cross-service and multi-agency collaboration, and would have been impossible to deliver without the support and contribution of colleagues working in Social Work, GIS / IT, Care for People and in terms of external partners, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and Police Scotland.
DELIVERING / How have you carried out your project? How did you ensure that this was done effectively? What are you doing to continue to improve?
In terms of Project Management, the project utilised Prince2 methodology and was sponsored by the Chief Executives of the Council and NHS D&G. Operation sponsorship was provided by the Council’s Resilience Manager and the Project Manager role was undertaken by the Council’s Corporate GIS Manager, supported by a Project Team and supplementary Project / Data Advisors.
Appointing the project team took advantage of established relationships arising from multi-agency resilience work, bringing together a team of subject matter experts to take the project forward;
· D&G Council’s Resilience Team, Social Work, GIS Team & Business and Technology Solutions
· NHS D&G Resilience adviser, a GP representative & Health Intelligence Unit input
· Police Scotland
PARD was developed in 2 phases;
• Phase One set out the broad principles, developed a framework specific to information management, data protection, classification and user interface and culminated in the integration of Social Work data into the system.
• Phase Two focussed on the integration of NHS data, and delivering improvements to the system
In terms of barriers, two significant challenges for the project were identified and resolved;
1) Specialist input was provided by experts from Social Work and NHS to ensure a mutual framework for categorising vulnerability was implemented which was compatible with both Social Work and NHS datasets, as there was no common standard in place prior to this.
2) Ensuring appropriate safeguards and protocols were in place in terms of Information Sharing. The system accesses particularly sensitive personal information and Social Work Services and the NHS (particularly the NHS Caldecott Guardian) needed to be absolutely confident that the system would not put this information at risk of a breach, and that only the information required to respond to the incident was utilised.
Learning from our experiences and making improvements is a key component of the work of Local Authority Resilience staff, and this philosophy is at the heart ongoing PARD development. Previous deployments of the system have highlighted areas for improvement, which have since been acted on, and this activity will continue to improve the system following future utilisation. Some examples of this include;
· Adoption of a “Cloud” based solution for hosting the software
· Enhancements to Remote access capabilities e.g. access in Police Control Room
INNOVATION & LEADING PRACTICE / Why is your project innovative? How is it helping to prepare for the future? What is happening to help other organisations benefit from your approach?
The project is innovative and unique in Scotland in that;
· it brings together datasets from both the Local Authority and the NHS which has not happened elsewhere,
· it has identified a common framework for the categorisation of the vulnerable,
· it is specifically designed to minimise risks of data breach by not actually holding any sensitive information
· it utilises a simple GIS interface to automatically extract information for ease of use and to minimise staff demands.
As mentioned previously the project provides an efficient and low cost solution at a time when levels of resources and funding are challenging.
Prior to having this system in place, responders will traditionally have had to contact a Resilience Officer, who would then activate a Care for People Manager who would then ask for Locality Social Work Teams to alert them to anyone who may need to be prioritised, which obviously would have been both time and labour intensive. Out of Hours, accessing this level of information would not have been possible without an even more significant delay, if at all. Using this system Emergency Services can access this information directly in their Control Rooms, and officers at a “scene” can have the information in a matter of minutes.
In terms of other organisations benefitting from our approach, some have been embedded in the project from the outset;
· Benefit to the NHS (as well as the Council) in that their clients who are most likely to need it will be prioritised for support.
· Benefit to the Emergency Services in that key resources can be deployed to provide assistance accurately and quickly to aid effective evacuation or the provision of assistance should this be required.
In addition to this discussions are ongoing with Public Utilities with regards to potentially using this system to identify priority users during utility outages, given the challenges these companies have with their current approach. The Council are also engaging with Scottish Government who plan on taking this forward nationally via the new National Centre for Resilience which will be based in Dumfries, which would benefit all Public Sector organisations as well as a range of Private and Third Sector Agencies.
PARD was presented to the wider Resilience Community at a Scottish Government Care for People Event held at Glasgow City Chambers on 3rd June 2015 and was very positively received by peers and partner agencies. Following on from this event we have welcomed a number of agencies to Dumfries and Galloway to look at the system in more detail, including Scottish Government Critical Infrastructure Unit, Scottish Borders Council and Falkirk Council.
RESULTS & IMPACT / What impact are you having, or expect to have? Are you delivering what you set out to achieve? How are you measuring this?
The project has been rolled out, and has been used in the response to a number of incidents. In 2015 alone it has been successfully utilised in the following events;
• Gas Pipeline breach with resulting evacuation zone, Raeburn Crescent, Gretna - 10 Aug 2015
• Widespread Severe Weather / Power Outages – 16th Jan 2015
• Suspicious Package / Bomb Disposal & evacuation, High Street, Annan – 8th Jan, 2015
The system as it stands absolutely delivers what was set out in terms of previously mentioned outcomes, and whilst there are challenges in terms of accurately quantifying and measuring success due to the nature of the system and the sporadic and unpredictable nature of the events for which it would be utilized it is fair to say that the following are measures of success.
• Achieving outputs which include LA and NHS datasets in a common system (a first in Scotland);
• Successful use of the system during a response to disruption as evidenced above;
• Significant levels of interest from peers, partner organisations and in particular government wishing to take forward the system nationally to benefit all public sector agencies.
• Winning the Emergency Planning Society – Resilience Innovation of the Year award
As mentioned it requires significantly less resources and time to be able to identify those in potential need of additional support in comparison to previous arrangements, and it allows the Emergency Services to act far more quickly in the event of an evacuation, in terms of safeguarding and assisting the vulnerable during a potentially time critical period.
Please limit your application to 3 pages or less and use font size 11or greater
NEXT STEPS
ü Have you answered the criteria set out in the guidance?
ü Is your application form 3 pages or less. (Anything more, including appendices, will be automatically rejected)
ü Has your application form been authorised by an appropriate person?
ü Have you indicated whether you wish the application form to be published?
ü Have you provided details for someone we can contact about your application?
SUBMITTING YOUR APPLICATION
PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION BY 23 OCTOBER 2015 USING OUR ONLINE APPLICATIONS PORTAL: