tailored to their needs - ThoughtWorks

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Highlights ThoughtWorks develops unique webbased application to enable faster, secure access to important and confidential child data and statistics Time to access the data is reduced from 18 months to real-time data analysis. Software increases resource availability within the Research and Evaluation team due to reduced demand for data entry The Place2Be gives children in schools a safe place to express their feelings through talking, creative work and play. It provides a range of school-based support services directly to children, parents and school staff members, including one-to-one and group counselling sessions, a lunchtime service and whole-class activities such as ‘circle time’. At the heart of their mission is a clear commitment to supporting children with evidential research. In practical terms, this involves rigorous selfevaluation of the clinical practices carried out as well as undertaking exploratory research using data collected over a number of years. This allows the charity to challenge their methods and support continued development of a quality-based, effective practice. Research figures and data that are collected by The Place2Be are of the upmost importance to the charity, schools and local authorities. The Place2Be has an in-house research and evaluation team that carries out all the internal evaluations for the organisation and is currently working towards achieving wider external evaluation and recognition of the work. The partnership between The Place2Be and ThoughtWorks began in December 2010 and has focused on developing an electronic data capture format for field staff. The initial pilot was released in March 2011. And the full launch went live in August 2011. Challenges Like many charities working with children, The Place2Be is required by law to capture and document all correspondence from each meeting with any child, parent or group. This includes all conversations and questionnaires completed by the child, parent and/or teacher, assessment sheets and case information forms. www.thoughtworks.com
Previously, this was all recorded on paper and sent by post to The Place2Be’s head office. From there it was forwarded to an external scanning company and the digital version was then sent to an external data handling company. After several months the data would be available for the statisticians to analyse. This approach slowed down their data analysis and meant their most recent available data was 12 months old. The answer was to look for a different and secure way of capturing the information from each child interaction. Not only would this speed up the paper to statistic turnaround time, it would save the charity money in the long term. However, it needed to be done in a way that was cost effective to the organisation and would not cause too much disruption to the staff’s daily roles with the children. The answer was to explore a web-based data capture format and after an introduction from a mutual friend of the business, The Place2Be turned to global IT consultancy, ThoughtWorks, for help in designing a bespoke portal for capturing data. Having previously worked on similar projects, the ThoughtWorks team understood how important it would be to develop a robust tool that would provide a simple, quick solution to capturing data effectively. “ This is a major event and something to really celebrate. Thank you to all for their involvement; this is truly a landmark in the development of The Place2Be. ” Benita Refson OBE, Place2Be Chief Executive The ThoughtWorks solution The ThoughtWorks team worked closely with Louisa McCallion, Digital Media Executive and other key stakeholders at The Place2Be, to identify the challenges the organisation was facing and how it could develop a cost effective portal tailored to the organisation’s needs. Working with input from users, the ThoughtWorks team developed a web-based application which was not only simple to use but would have a demonstrable impact on the business. A selection of developers worked tirelessly over a five-month period to build the software in line with the objectives that had been set. Following the successful build and development of the application, using ThoughtWorks’ Agile principles, a pilot test was launched in Ealing, West London. For one month, field staff inputted their data and recorded conversations via the web-application to identify any difficulties or problems that occurred. Feedback from the pilot test was then taken into account and four months later, the scheme was formally rolled out to all 172 schools. Along with the application roll-out, step by step online training webinars were created by the in-house research team at The Place2Be and delivered to all the regional field staff. www.thoughtworks.com
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tailored to their needs - ThoughtWorks

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