Web-based Case Management System for Baca Charity

Baca is a local charity, providing supported accommodation and development training for forced migrant young people who are 16 years and over. They are acknowledged, both locally and nationally, as a specialist service provider characterised by passion and innovation. They believe and are committed to investing time, care, support, love, friendship, teaching and guidance into their young people’s lives to help positively shape their future.

To deliver and manage the service that Baca provides, understandably requires a great degree of administration, which is thoroughly monitored and involves multiple parties from both within the organisation and externally (including social services and local authorities).

The number of different systems that Baca staff had to employ on a daily basis was a growing challenge. With ever-changing funding and reporting requirements, the existing systems were becoming less suitable. There was a pressing need to find a single system that would facilitate the required administration in a more effective manor and accommodate future potential changes. Out-of-the-box solutions, which were trialled were not able to cater for the full needs of the organisation and an existing bespoke system developed a number of years earlier was similarly limited in its ability.

We worked alongside staff at Baca to identify the type of information they were capturing across the different systems. We also met with the organisation’s leadership to discuss the higher level requirements that a bespoke system would need to consider.

We have developed a web-based case management system called Acacia, that is much more intuitive to use, recording data—originally held across multiple systems—in one place. The system also allows for the extraction of the recorded information to help the organisation strategically with bid-writing, reporting and overall strategy.

The system is modular in design and includes the following features:

• Caseworkers are able to manage and support their young people, logging activities and appointments along with outcomes and observations.
• Evidencing of the young people’s development through attended classes and mainstream education.
• Housing team is able to manage accommodation including occupancy, repairs and maintenance.

We have delivered a single case management system much more capable and straightforward to use compared with the multiple systems that were used previously by Baca.

There is an ongoing roadmap for the development of the system to help improve it further and grow in capacity, reflecting the growth and development of the organisation.