Cheshire East Council - Case Study
Education and social care teams at Cheshire East Council now have easy access to all the information they need in order to support children and young people, and their families.
Introduction
Synergy connects Cheshire East Council with all of its local schools, and integrates seamlessly with its social care system. This gives a connected view of each child and young person, and helps to achieve positive outcomes.
As an existing Synergy customer, Cheshire East Council was very satisfied with our education management software, which helps local authorities, schools and other providers to support families more effectively, by spanning the full education and child services spectrum.
Interfacing schools and systems
In March 2018, Cheshire East Council sought to interface the education management system with its 150+ local schools, as well as the multiple platforms it was already using to gather data.
Synergy automates feeds from schools and other systems to provide a regular stream of information for the local authority. During a seven-month period, we interfaced its education platform with several other providers to collate data from all of the Council’s 156 schools. The Synergy team worked with multiple providers simultaneously to ensure the Council could rationalise its systems and gather data accurately.
Interoperable software - creating a connected view
Cheshire East Council was also the first of our local authority partners to integrate Synergy with another provider’s social care system. Synergy interoperates seamlessly with third-party software, to record and manage all aspects of children’s services.
Let’s face it, local authorities are complex and large organisations, we tend to work in silos and purchase systems without interoperability in mind. So, working with systems that integrate with one another is very important for helping us provide joined-up services. Linking all of these systems together allows for faster decision-making and more accurate forecasting, and it allows us to react quickly to potential situations around exclusions and attainment checkmarks.
The result
- A two-way flow of data between education and social care systems is now in place, creating full visibility of each child across multiple teams
- Administrative time is reduced when locating and manually updating education information systems
- Time is saved by not having to manually write and generate reports
- Implementation costs were significantly lower
- Decisions can now be made much faster, and the Council’s education and social care teams can carry out more accurate forecasting
- A secure offsite hosting service was provided for the Council’s critical data; reducing the complexity and overheads that come with onsite data management
- Closer interaction between families, schools and other providers has now been achieved
Inspiring others
All local authorities have a legal responsibility to ensure that their young people are receiving adequate attention and the opportunity to attain a good education. Synergy enables faster decision-making and more accurate forecasting, so Cheshire East Council can now react quickly to potential situations around exclusions and attainment checkmarks.
Thanks to the ongoing partnership with Cheshire East Council, Synergy has evolved to become even more flexible, user-friendly and intuitive, meaning that the Council’s Children’s Services teams can focus on providing care, safeguarding and supporting children and young people.
