City & County of Swansea - ENLIGHT and ENQUIRE

 

'Housing Options’ is the City and County of Swansea’s Housing Advice Centre: every year they handle substantial numbers of homelessness presentations, as well as providing housing advice and maintaining the Authority’s Housing Register. In 2006/7 Swansea received over 2,500 homelessness (over 10% of all enquiries reported in Wales and the largest throughput of any Welsh authority in that year) and the service as a whole dealt with 12,000 customers coming through its doors.

 

The (then) Service Manager, Bridget Price, realised that, with a caseload of this magnitude, it is vital to offer a consistent service, and to equip the whole Housing Options team with sufficient resources to enable them to provide the best possible service. Bridget wanted procedural guidance, legislation, case law, housing and support solutions brought together in one easily-accessible place.

Bridget said: ‘When we saw examples of Electronic Procedures that Destin had produced for our neighbours Neath Port Talbot and also Rhondda Cynon Taf we were struck with how well presented and comprehensive they were, and we liked the flexibility of being able to include whatever information is locally relevant.

 

It is also very important to us that any system we purchase is user friendly in order to ensure that staff are comfortable in using it.

 

The examples Destin showed us, and our subsequent experience since having our system installed, have convinced us that we were right to go for the Destin Solutions system.’

 

With little time to divert away from the business of providing the service Bridget needed a trouble-free way of putting together, and maintaining, procedural guidance and all the information her staff need.

 

Bridget continued: ‘ Destin’s on-line procedures package allowed us to learn how we could make changes to our manual, once produced, to respond to changes in the way we do things. We were impressed by the idea that the manual would always be relevant. Users would quickly lose confidence if they found that the manual was not keeping pace with day-to-day operational changes, legislative developments and additional case law. However, although the editing tool appeared to be easy to use, we were concerned about our ability to respond quickly enough when changes are needed. Our responsibility to our service users always takes precedence, and our workload isn’t necessarily predictable.’

 

Trouble Free Maintenance

Bridget liked the idea of Destin’sweb hosting solution. Destin develops and hosts the manual at a secure web address, and when changes needed to content, experienced consultants carry them out for the client, immediately they are required.

 

Reduced Risk

‘Now, we don’t need to find server space for the editing software or the project files, and we don’t need to worry about what happens if our editors move on.

 

We are secure in the knowledge that our manual will be up-to-date and reliable. It will continue to be a valuable tool for years to come, even when there are fundemental changes to the context in which we work.'

 

Click here to download the Swansea case study