£470K saved at London Borough of Barnet Council
Local Authorities
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Results & ROI
- A new case management process with potential initial savings of £470,000
- A smoother, safer and more service user centred approach to managing older adults and individuals with physical and/or sensory disabilities
The client
London Borough of Barnet Council (LBB) service a population of over 300,000 people across 21 wards in North London. As well as other services, they are responsible for the provision of Adult Social Care across the borough. This includes providing services for older people, individuals with disabilities and people with mental health problems.
The challenge
The council’s Adult Social Care and Health department developed and implemented a new business model that put personalisation at the heart of the service. To build on this, and to achieve greater levels of efficiency, LLB decided to adopt Lean Thinking. They engaged us to review the end-to-end case management process for older adults and individuals with physical and/or sensory disabilities. The objective, as phase 1 of a two phase project, was to develop a new, tested process and an implementation plan, which they could deliver (phase 2). The project had to incorporate the council’s other strategic objectives, including doubling the number of service users with a personal budget and achieving a cut in expenditure of approximately 20% over the next three years.
The approach
The project was split into 4 parts:
Lean training
Training to establish some independent understanding of Lean by the end of phase 1.
Diagnostic
The team were engaged in a complex array of activities. Diagnostic findings showed a need for greater coordination, a lack of alignment between the financial and the care processes, a lack of easy access to information, and limited use of the various customer feedback mechanisms.
Redesign
Redesign focused on the core value steps of the service, eliminating anything that detracted from these. The result was an improved process that reduced duplication, reduced manual data entry, enabled quicker identification of errors and delivered more effective reporting.
Implementation planning
An implementation plan was created addressing the key process, infrastructure and culture changes required.
The benefits
Despite phase 1 not including implementation of the new process, LLB realised a number of significant benefits. The department have an established Lean Team, trained and able to internally manage the implementation of the new process and support development of Information Centres that were set up. The project engaged staff across a number of functions in applying Lean and problem solving, and the set up of Information Centres will help ensure those skills are used to continually improve.
“We now have a safety net through which no client will fall”
Team Manager