Dudley County Council - Case Study
Simple, cross-system digital sharing means Dudley Council’s education team has more time to provide better care for children, young people and families.
Synergy software helps Dudley Council deliver a unique digital case management journey.
Making information sharing easy and straightforward across systems, departments and even amongst providers, Synergy delivers a shift in the way digital care is brought to Dudley Council’s younger citizens and their families.
Introduction
Synergy, our education management system, has been a vehicle for change for Dudley Council, creating time for more strategic decision-making and improving efficiencies across teams. Families have faster, better access to the support they need
A tailor-made implementation
Dudley Council purchased the full Synergy suite back in 2014, after receiving poor user feedback on the previous system. As Synergy is modular-based, Dudley Council was able to select functionality to suit its digital care objectives over the subsequent years – initially implementing a number of support modules, such as Special Educational Needs (SEN), Free School Meals and Benefits (FSMB), Pupil Support Services (PSS), and the Family Information Service (FIS).
Synergy can map data from multiple systems into a single record for each child, and has enabled Dudley Council to update its records with ease. It minimises the creation of duplicate child records and allows data quality to be maintained at a higher level. Synergy’s support modules provide Dudley Council with a more joined-up education management system, creating a single digital view of each child’s care and education needs.
We had staggered the implementation to align with our business and development strategy. Throughout this journey, we have continued to receive vital support and guidance and we felt that they really understood how local authorities work.
Their data migration team worked closely with us to understand the data structures, and the data quality issues. They continually fed back to us where we needed to correct the data quality, ensuring that the migrated data was accurate. We felt very reassured every step of the way that we could make the switchover with ease.
The result
- All professionals with a login can contribute information for children with SEN – making it easier to compile a child’s education and healthcare plan (EHCP).
- Provides a clear view of each child’s special educational needs for better, faster and more accurate decision-making.
- PSS provides a complete view of all involvements that a child or young person has across education service teams in one single case record allowing for improved information sharing and data driven service transformation.
- Synergy’s suite of web portals, such as the online Family Information Services solution, provides an improved customer experience allowing citizens to self-serve anytime and anywhere.
- UK-based customer services teams provide expert, on-going support and guidance, ensuring that Dudley Council continue to maximise their usage of the system.
Inspiring others
Our education support modules help Dudley Council to maximise Synergy to suit all requirements, enabling them to operate an efficient and effective education management system, so the Council can spend more time focusing on providing care and support for families, children and young people.
