Phoenix Homes joins the Caseworks community

Phoenix Homes in Lewisham and Bromley became the latest customer to join the Caseworks community with an on-time 1st April deadline met.

Phoenix is sharing the Lewisham Database, resulting in savings and benefits to both, with no compromises to either. Phoenix has its own login screen, its own customisation and its own reports. Its cases are private to its own users. Lewisham Community Safety Unit, however is able to product gobal statistics in a way which would previously have been impossible. A win-win solution.

First Android Product launched

HUBSolutions launched its first Android Mobile product at East Durham Homes at the end of February 2012.

The product, the first of a family of data collection applications, was designed to collect Estate Scoring data and upload it into Caseworks for analysis. The architecture of the application has taken the team several months to develop, but is already flexible enough to permit entirely different functionality merely by changing the customisation.

The demo and handover at East Durham was a great success. The use of Housemark Photos for the assessment of grades, was particularly visually pleasing and much better than just a subjective assessment.  As always, review by other people leads to suggested improvements and an exciting idea was the inclusion of a separate Photo button for each scoring item - an option which was not needed or practical with the previous desk based version. HUBSolutions has committed to delivering this enhancement by the end of the financial year.

Launch of the DV MARAC Module for Westminster City Council

A variation of the Domestic Violence was completed and launched at Westminster City Council on 1st August 2011. The new version of the module was specifically designed to coordinate the MARAC meetings, a very demanding and critical task at Westminster.

A major challenge, was the creation of a Data Collection Excel spreadsheet for Referrals from the wide range of agencies who work with the MARAC meeting. The locked down, user-friendly spreadsheet captures more information than the previous paper form, including the full CAADA Risk Assessment. After a period of consultation it was readily accepted by all of the referrers.

Another challenge was the creation of the MARAC Agenda, Minutes and Actions - all of which are complex, multi-page documents, which are created online for the user to download. 

The system has saved a great deal of staff time in data manipulation and is collecting data in a format enabling sophisticated reports to be prepared.  Westminster City is sufficiently enthusiastic about the Module, to commission a second related module for their Sanctuary Scheme for the protection of persons at risk of violence.

Greenwich goes Live and Caseworks hits 2,000,000 case pages

After a lengthy period of customisation, the latest Caseworks customer - London Borough of Greenwich - has gone live. Feedback from the Greenwich Project Manager immediately after go live was that "initial feedback has been very positive".

Two months later at the first post live Review Meeting, users seemed to be quite ecstatic. A user who had previously shunned all technology, is reported as having said that it was making his job much easier. Sally Midlane, Unit Manager, said she was really thrilled with the supervision facility and had called all the staff round her PC to view the summary data. She also reported meeting the new Director of Housing, who had come from Leeds City Council who confirmed that in his experience at Leeds that Caseworks is a "brilliant product"

A long list of enhancements which will be of benefit to other customers has been installed. These include full provision for RIPA, Surveillance, Restorative Justice and Formal Complaints. In addition, Greenwich has made full use of lesser used functionality such as grouping cases together into Projects and organising referrals to Panel Meetings.



Already Greenwich users have added much detail to the skeletal cases which were data loaded, and this has just taken the total of all case pages in all caseworks sites across the country to over two million. Data has never been added faster than it is now, with one Case Page being added somewhere in the country during working hours every 15 seconds.


Does any other supplier publish comparable data?

HUBSolutions goes with Android

Following full discussion with key customers, HUBSolutions has decided to bring out the next version of its award-winning Mobile Software on the Android operating system. The move away from Microsoft has been precipitated by the decision of Microsoft to introduce Windows 7 Mobile, which is incompatible with the previous operating system, and in many ways is also incompatible with the concept of Business to Business software provision.

Peter Hall, Managing Director of HUBSolutions, stated that the transition would be an opportunity to launch new, exciting mobile applications catering for a wider range of needs and would extend the company's products to Tablets as well as Smartphones. The first applications are expected to be available by the end of this year.

Speed trebled for hosted Caseworks sites

HUBSolutions is pleased to announce implementation of a new server and new network for our seven customers for whom we provide a hosted service.

Conversion was done smoothly and without any service down time over a weekend. The new server is more than twice as fast, the new bandwidth is an order of magnitude greater than before and several aspects of security are also greatly improved.

The need for this has been caused by several customers increasing the number of users - in two cases by 100% - and several customers also requesting new facilities - mapping etc - which will make greater demands of the system.

The upgrade has been achieved in partnership with Netbenefit (UK) Ltd (www.netbenefit.com), a local London company, with many public sector clients, and who have bent over backwards to assist HUBSolutions staff in the conversion process.

Two new customers

Two new customers signed up for the Caseworks ASB Module this October.

Contour Housing Group is already halfway through the customisation process and the London Borough of Greenwich has broken through a mountain of bureaucracy to get a signed contract.

Both customers look set to make significant additions to the Caseworks specification, and also have some new parallel requirements - Colour Coding of cases - now part of the core system.