The Client
Horton Housing manages more than 30 different housing, training and support services across Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and North Yorkshire. As a not-for-profit organisation Horton Housing provides housing, training and support services to the most vulnerable people in society. Their dedicated teams work with a wide range of clients including people who are homeless, have mental health, drug or alcohol issues, young people, older people, refugees, Gypsies, Travellers, Roma and Showpeople, people with disabilities and ex-offenders.
The Challenge
To deliver a mobile app to extend the functionality of the existing care management software, allowing community based floating support staff and scheme-based support staff to access and update client data from mobile devices. The traditional model of using paper-based records presented several operational challenges and inefficiencies and did not deliver the access to information and security required by managers and office based teams.
Adding to the complexity of the project was the desire to amend the process and workflow within the existing care management software to support the switch from paper to digital, and the need to upskill support staff on the use of new technology.
The Solution
Emerald’s mobile app Orion delivers a solution that allows support workers to operate offline as well as online and to update client records via a data connection.
As part of the project Orion was optimised to work on a specific model of Chromebook. Orion also works on Android/IOS devices and includes features such as:
- speech to text to simplify the recording of information
- device level security
- device level data encryption
- secure data transmission protocols
- in app signature recording to allow completion of support contracts and forms
Alongside Orion is a Data Management Hub containing a series of key performance reports allowing managers to view real time data on the activity of their support teams. These reports deliver information that was not previously available and mean that key metrics around client safety and support is easily identifiable.
