This Blog was kindly written and contributed by Jane Hancer, Campaigns Director CC2i Ltd, Co-fund & Collaborate to Innovate.
Funding to progress new digital projects is hard to come by and cross sector collaboration is often hard to achieve. Over the past few years there has been proven success in both crowdfunding and accelerator programmes to drive good – mostly digital – ideas in priority areas. Building on these successes, the LGA’s Social Care Digital Innovation Programme (SCDIP) has just launched the Social Care Digital Innovation Accelerator (SCDIA).
Working with the public sector co-funding platform CC2i, the SCDIA is attempting to stimulate digital transformation in social care and engage with experts in local government to enable faster digital adoption in critical areas. Sitting alongside 12 SCDIP funded projects, the accelerator is testing a new approach for public sector to drive much needed change in social care.
The three projects identified for the accelerator have several critical elements to them; they either focus on new legislation that all of local government will need to address, they seek to bring relevant proven technology from the private sector into the public sector domain and/or they focus on a priority area of shared service delivery pain.
In each case the projects here have been chosen for an accelerator approach as they have clear business cases and will be of interest to at least 20 councils once delivered, if not 100+. This long term focus to deliver outcomes on a sustainable footing sits at the heart of these innovations and is designed to ensure they do not end up on the shelf gathering dust at the end of the program.
The projects in this years Social Care Digital Innovation Accelerator include:
Liberty Protection Safeguard Legislation: To undertake an agile discovery approach to the new Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) legislation, mapping the differences to the current Deprivation of Liberty process and optimising ways of engaging all stakeholders and then develop a digital solution that works for all partners.
Home Assessments Augmented Reality App (think ‘Ikea Place’ for Home assessments): This project will co-design, develop and evaluate an augmented reality app enabling practitioners and people to better understand where there may be potential in their home to better meet their needs or manage risk by using aids, equipment or technology enabled care solutions.
A Multi-Agency Medicinal Management Discovery & Development Project: Tackling the complicated relationships that exist between patients, GPs, pharmacists, hospitals, carers and family members in terms of medicine management. To both decrease the patient risks that currently exist within the system, as well as reduce wastage both in terms of carer time and pharmaceuticals.
An accelerator not only brings leading technology providers together with public sector organisations, but in this case it actively seeks councils to co-design the solutions so that they meet the widest possible sector requirements. The solutions aim to be platform and provider agnostic, built in such a way to really meet the challenges faced by local authorities and their health and care partners.
The SCDIA is looking for five councils to commit to each project. Councils will each need to bring co-funding of £10,000 to the table, along with subject matter expertise. Alongside this the SCDIP will match fund these contributions and the projects will be independently assessed by the Institute of Public Care.
This is the first time a co-funding and match-funding accelerator has been launched. Critically, the councils that step up to be involved are rewarded for their time and effort. As with all CC2i collaborations (as some councils in iNetwork already know from other projects), being one of the original co-funders not only enables councils to steer the project, but also benefit from a better ongoing arrangement post the accelerator.
Already Suffolk County Council and Halton BC are signed up and a number of other councils are taking decisions in terms of involvement to their senior leadership. Projects are looking to begin in earnest at the end of July – should any iNetwork member be interested in getting involved please review the three pitches here: https://cc2i.org.uk/pitches/current-pitches/ or contact jane.hancer@cc2i.org.uk directly.