Cambridge, UK. - November 2009
Putting People First – More Councils select Open Objects
Gloucestershire County Council and the London Borough of Barnet are the latest UK local authorities to select Open Objects’ Adult Social Care Hub to help them meet their obligations under the Government’s “Putting People First” concordat.
Open Objects’ Adult Social Care Hub is fast becoming a key building block in the
transformation strategy at UK local authorities. It provides a one-stop solution for online
signposting of care services for adults and for the creation of information-rich websites which
cross the boundaries of social care such as housing, benefits, leisure, transport and health
services.
Free availability of personalised and high quality information is at the heart of the transforming
social care agenda. Recent guidance issued by Department of Health and Association of
Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) calls for every council to have a strategy in place
to create universal information and advice services by April 2010. This is a key milestone
along the transformation path and one that is addressed directly by Open Objects’ Adult Social
Care Hub with its ability to pull together and manage information from any number of public
sector, third sector and private sector sources.
Rosie Callinan, Gloucestershire’s Putting People First Workstream Manager says: "We wanted
a solution that is feature rich and also something that could be implemented swiftly. The Hub is
an off the shelf solution that comes with a data harvester that "pulls" information from local
web sites and other resources bringing the implementation cycle down to weeks rather than
months.”
The Hub provides an immediate win for Social Care teams and also a strategic solution on
which to build. It includes a range of social networking tools to encourage participation and
feedback from Hub users, as well as personalisation tools to enable easy creation of service
shortlists and enable brokerage for hard to reach groups. Forward links into e-procurement of
services and links to back office case management systems are facilitated through the open Web
2.0 design of the Hub.
About Open Objects Software
Open Objects provide advanced solutions for local government around the theme; Discover. Share. Search. These directly address the challenges of e-government and transformational government promoting greater public access to information and enabling information sharing within single authorities and strategic partnerships. One in five of all councils in the UK use Open Objects solutions for websites, online directories or intranet.
For more details, please see www.openobjects.com/adult-social-care/.
Contacts for more information:
Antony Griffiths / Gavin Cameron, Open Objects Software: 01223 422200