Over the past few months we have been working with the Department of Health and Social Care to produce a Foundational Specification for the procurement of adult social care case management and finance systems.
The Specification has been designed after a multi-stage consultation process with a variety of stakeholders. These include representatives from Local Authorities across the country, existing and prospective system suppliers and organisations including Department for Education, Crown Commercial Service, Care Quality Commission, Partners in Care and Health, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and Client Level Data.
At its core, the Foundational Specification aims to simplify the procurement process for Local Authorities by providing a standardised specification, saving valuable time, cost and resources when going out to procure a new case management system. In addition, this guidance will promote improved functionality, greater data-sharing and potential economies of scale.
Throughout the project, open and continuous engagement with stakeholders was maintained to ensure that the final Specification was firmly grounded in the real needs and priorities of its users. This engagement began with one-to-one discussions involving a broad range of local authorities, aimed at understanding the challenges and aspirations of those working with case management systems. It was followed by a nationwide survey distributed to all English authorities, and a series of in-depth workshops focused on different aspects of the Specification. These workshops, attended by representatives from over two dozen local authorities, provided invaluable insights and enabled an unprecedented level of contribution from practitioners, directly shaping the content and structure of the final Specification.
“The Bettergov workshops were well-designed to address each of the elements of system design in the right order and gave a really great opportunity to share thoughts and ideas openly with other colleagues from around the country.”
– Alasdair Bowen, Business Systems Manager, Adult Social Care, Royal Borough of Kingston
The specification is available here https://khub.net/web/operatingmodeltoolkit/foundational-specification for any local authority and current / future case management system supplier in the UK to use as a guide. These are living documents, allowing for regular updates. We hope that local authorities find them useful.
