2020 03 27 — Weeknotes
2.12 — the one setting up the Community Hub and the clap for carers
I appreciate that at this time, the last thing that people may need to do is read my weeknotes, but I am trying to ensure that I keep to a least a bit of routine and who knows reading this may just be the distraction that someone may need…
The main focus this week has been in the creation of the Community Hub that Councils in the UK are setting up as part of the response to the Coronavirus pandemic. These Hubs are there to assist the most vulnerable in our communities by ensuring that they have the support they need: food; connecting to people; medical supplies; someone to walk the dog and anything else besides.
It has been amazing how teams have come together to make some of this happen. Not just teams within Digital, but also across the Council and into the Community — the offers of help that the Council is receiving and the support from the Voluntary Sector is impressive.
Planning for the hub itself have been a challenge, often on limited (and changing) information, which is understandable as the landscape has been changing often over the week. Key planning was based on a letter that was being sent to 1.5m people in total therefore our estimate of this was that there may be seven thousand people in Hounslow classed as vulnerable. The hub needed contact centre telephone lines, call flows, processes for allocating and dealing with the needs, physical presence, equipment for staff, training and more.
We have created a mini contact centre, pretty much overnight with Amazon Web Services and the infrastructure team in Hounslow. One of the main reasons we did this was because we didn’t know the expected demand and this way we were able to ensure that we had the capacity and could manage the flow of information. Once we had the first list of people who had self referred from the gov.uk website and the agents trained up the team started to call them directly to understand their needs. All of this was done and managed remotely with people working at home!! Impressive. Once we had started, we were then able to start to deliver food out to the most needy. Now a couple of paragraphs here doesn’t really do justice to the team work, the creativity, the dedication across a range of services in the Council to actually make this happen. Have been very proud to be part of this and actually helping the Community.
Across the Council we had another record of people working at home with 1,500 people logged in via the remote access. We are continuously monitoring a range of metrics to ensure we are keeping ahead of the situation and looking to respond appropriately. We have had people collaborating on documents in ways they have never done before.
Part of the challenge is to ensure we are responding to the crisis but we are trying to move things forwards as well. This week we had our first Digital Design Authority in the Council where we are bringing together a range of people to help plan, prioritise and design how we practically deliver the Digital Strategy and ensure that we think about the needs of our communities. It was a great meeting with a range of people across the Council coming together. Martin Forshaw — our Assistant Director Operational Child’s Safeguarding, presented the first ever proper item at the DDA! He said he “was thrilled and terrified to be the first item on the DDA”. He presented the service design review of Childrens Services front door services. This is a major piece of work and a major change in how the Council does things. He did an amazing job at presenting the issues they have and how this new approach would benefit his team and therefore the Children of Hounslow. Pleased to say it was approved!
Certainly one of the most emotional moments of the week was the Thursday evening clap for carers and the NHS at 2000, went outside and really didn’t expect anyone to be there or hear anything but was amazed at the noise and the support and love that was out there! Someone even let off a couple of fireworks at the end! Just awesome!
With all this it is important to ensure some downtime as well. Cleaning the fish tank on Saturday wasn’t quite what I needed to do but was very good to switch off for a bit!
As I am writing this on Sunday afternoon — it’s snowing — just as you think things can’t get stranger…
Tune of the week: Katy Perry - Firework
