1. Confirm there is no similar tool in your area
It is critically important to first ascertain if there is a tool in your area (either in operation or under development) that performs the function of the Family Context tool.
The North West London ICB’s ‘New Systems Group’ has been set up to ensure that new tools within the ICB geography do not duplicate existing tools. Check to see if a similar group is in operation in your area and engage with them to ensure that your project does not duplicate what is already in operation.
| How the Family Context tool works
The tool gives professionals a joined-up view of who is already engaged with services under a thematic area (e.g. Children’s Social Care and Adult Social Care). To do this, agencies share professional involvement data with a central body, which matches this to create a single record for each individual. The Family Context tool is deployed on top of this combined dataset, detailing the services that an individual is presently engaged with. This enables efficiency through reduction in the time spent by practitioners ‘calling around’ (phoning services to understand which ones are involved with an individual’s care provision) and better coordination of care between services. You can access a demo of the children’s social care tool with sample data here. As this is a wireframe built to demonstrate functionality, you do not need a username or password. Click on the green boxes to go from page to page. |
| Important note
After transitioning from Commissioning Care Groups to Integrated Care Boards in 2022, ICBs were required to develop a Shared Care Record. These records bring together information from various sources involved in an individual’s care, including medical information, service involvement and care plans. Development and deployment of these records varies by area (they might not be available to Social Care staff within Local Authorities or available as ‘read only’) so it is important to consider the stage of deployment of your local Shared Care Record, what information it holds, and who has access to this information when deciding whether the Family Context tool is appropriate for your area. |
2. Establish a project plan with distinct phases
We recommend that you define the different phases of work, with clear outputs for each, so you can easily move from one phase of the work to the next and effectively track progress.
For our project, we followed four distinct phases:
3. Set strong project governance and project management principles
We delivered our project using an agile project management framework. This involved regular ‘ceremonies’ to ensure timely delivery of project outputs and opportunities for regular feedback to adjust the project approach. We also set up an overarching governance group to ‘check and challenge’ project delivery, and convened specific working groups around thematic areas.
Regular involvement of representatives from the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) across all groups was incredibly helpful in terms of keeping them informed about project progress and ensuring that any changes to project scope and delivery could be effectively managed.
A breakdown of our ceremonies, the individuals involved, and the frequency of meetings can be found below:
Top tips
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4. Secure internal support from key stakeholders
It is important to secure buy-in for the implementation of the tool before the project launches and to carefully manage this over the duration of the project. The suggestions about governance (see step 3) will support this, as will consideration and involvement of the relevant service areas.
Deploying the Family Context tool requires successful engagement and coordination between multiple services within the local authority, including (but not limited to) frontline services, information governance, IT and digital.
We recommend that you identify early on who the service leads are for this area and meet with them to demo the tool and outline the potential benefits of engaging and sharing information. There may be service-specific boards that you need to present to – having a slide deck outlining the benefits will be helpful.
IT teams often have limited resources to support the deployment of a new tool so it is also useful to:
5. Identify and agree your lawful basis and legal gateways for processing data
Under the GDPR, you must have an identified lawful basis for processing personal information. Spend time with your partners outlining which lawful basis you will use and, if you choose legal obligation, get a good understanding of which pieces of legislation you are using to establish ‘legal gateways’ for processing personal data. Data protection leads within your own organisation and partner organisations can help you to identify these.
| Top tip
LOTI has a dedicated Pan-London Information Governance lead with a wealth of experience who can offer advice, guidance and support. They can be reached at contact@loti.london |
You should identify early on who has the sufficient seniority within organisations to sign off on information being shared both within your own organisation and with external partners. This will likely be a head of service or equivalent – getting their sign-off early on is essential to move things along.
6. Create information governance documentation
You will need to create several documents to allow for the sharing of information to support the tool.
Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
This ‘living’ document will set out the details of the proposed data sharing and assess the risks – it will evolve over the duration of your project.
All partners who will be involved in sharing data will need to sign up to the DPIA and, depending on the preferences of information governance leads, you may need to complete multiple DPIAs in different organisational templates.
For simplicity, try to agree using a single DPIA with relevant governance leads within an appropriate forum (e.g. the IG Working Group) as this will prevent duplication of effort.
| Top tip
There are various online tools available to support you with completing DPIAs, such as the Dapian tool, which was co-funded by LOTI. |
Data Sharing Agreements (DSAs) (also called Information Sharing Agreements or ISAs)
A DSA or ISA is different to a DPIA as it is a static agreement between two organisations entering into a data sharing relationship. It will typically include:
Amendments to privacy notices
As the data sharing will likely constitute a new use of data, data subjects will need to be informed of this change. Privacy notices should therefore be reviewed by the project team and data protection lead to ensure they reflect this new sharing.
7. Share strong drafts with partners as early as possible
Information governance practitioners are incredibly busy and have to review many lengthy documents for large organisations. While it is critical to engage partners as early as possible, providing incomplete or draft documents is likely to increase the chances of delay. Get your documents to a significant level of completion before sharing them.
| Top tip
Consider engaging recognised experts to help you complete these documents. LOTI’s Pan-London Information Governance Lead supported us in the creation of our IG documentation. Their contribution, reputation and standing gave assurances to IG partners that we had done a thorough job. |
