Agenda item

A report was presented by Sarah Jenkins, Head of Service – Customer Access providing an update on the operation and performance of the Customer Access Service.

The Customer Access Service (CAS) was the first point of contact for 60% of all incoming  telephony and email enquiries to Lancashire County Council.  The strategic plan had been for additional services to be delivered by the CAS, in order to better serve the citizens of Lancashire, whilst improving costs and efficiency. Within the CAS is the dedicated Social Care Centre for Adult's and Children's Social Care, and the Customer Contact Centre delivering 26  services including Highways, Ask HR, Libraries, Blue Badge, Registration, Crisis Support, Waste and Welfare Rights.

The Committee noted that calls into Adults and Children's Social Care had reduced, as a result of safer, more effective referral pathways.  The impact to Adults social care had been influenced by the Newton's programme of pathway to independence.  Similarly, with Children's social care, a change of process had been made at the front door, reducing the need for professionals to make repeat calls, by directing the contact to the most appropriate team at the first point of contact.

In relation to the Blue Badge Scheme, there had been improvements in application processing times and waiting times; lots of calls had been received in relation to eligibility and renewal.  It was reported that the main reason for a Blue Badge being declined was that the applicant was not in receipt of the correct benefits and that, in these cases, once this had been rectified, the refusal would be look at again, resulting in the badge being awarded for applicants meeting the eligibility criteria.  This meant that some people would have been included in the figures for both 'applications declined' and 'badges awarded'.  The County Council had increased the offering of free internet access with some assistance in Lancashire libraries, to help people with the application which had to be completed online.  However, it should be noted that there was a separate fast track application process for terminally ill applicants.

Following on from the audit, an improvement plan was currently being work on to review some of our processes in relation to the Blue Badge scheme and particularly our correspondence to improve customer experience.  The issues raised included quality of the letters sent out and the lack of detailed responses.

In response to a query, Sarah confirmed that an annual review was completed to check whether any Blue Badges were no longer required.  The County Council were able to render them as 'not in use' but it was noted that this was a difficult process, especially in relation to applicants who had deceased.  The Blue Badge Service was part of the 'Tell Us Once' scheme, which allowed people to report a death to most government organisations in one go.

The Committee noted that, as part of the development of the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) model within Children's Social Care, changes had been made to the referral process, in order to ensure that qualified social workers dealt with concerns at the first point of contact.

Work had been undertaken with Corporate Communications to design a dynamic and engaging recruitment advertisement, including profiles on existing staff and their experience working for LCC.  The new advert had been well received by applicants, demonstrating the benefits of working for the authority.  Young people had said they preferred to submit a CV, rather than completing an application form and this had resulted in a much larger amount of applications being received.  It was agreed that this should be discussed with Children Looked After (CLA) at the Corporate Parenting Board due to take place on 7^th December. 

The Committee were advised that the Genesys Project which supported enhanced multi channel contact and was also used by LCC Accounts Payable and Procurement Services, Emergency Duty Team, MASH Children's Services and BTLS Ask ICT, was currently in Phase 2, focussing on implementing new functionality such as telephony Auto-Attendant, in addition to new channels of contact including Web-Chat and Social Media.

It was noted that Customer Access were currently managing changes to the Crisis Support service, in order to cease the cash voucher payments currently provided, and replace them with food parcels.

It was reported that there had been a huge uptake on NoWcard online renewals and that we were currently in the re-issue period which occurred every 5 years, which was an extremely busy time for the CAS to assist customers whose badges were due to expire on 31^st March 2018.

Resolved:  That the Cabinet Committee note the contents of the report.