Growth and development.pdf

Scottish BordersHistorically, the Council has not experienced significant problems of staff recruitment andretention. Exceptions have been home care staff and community-based occupational therapists.In response, the authority has created senior occupational therapist posts, and plans to retrainits home care staff to provide community support to a wider range of clients. More flexible jobdescriptions have been drawn up to facilitate this. However, numbers of applicants for jobshave dropped.The Council has made use of information systems to show where service users with specificneeds are concentrated and where skilled staff can be most effectively deployed.7. Modernising servicesThe Council has worked closely with asylum seekers and travellers. The Council is a foundingmember of the Race Equality Partnership (with Edinburgh and the Lothian councils) whichintends to establish an ethnic minority advice and resource centre as one of its first priorities.Social work has an action plan designed to meet the requirements of a Race Equality Scheme,including work to monitor, evaluate and report on access and take-up of social work servicesby people from differing racial and ethnic origins.The Council runs a major Modernising Government project aimed at the electronic delivery ofservices. A strategy for public contact through the phone, internet and one-stop shops wasdeveloped following a front-line services review which included a survey to establish publicpreferences for accessing services.A new social work information system is being introduced, consistent with e-government. It willbe web-compliant and capable of linking to other corporate systems, including education, andto client and service information in other agencies, including health. Scottish Borders and itshealth and voluntary sector partners are part of the eCare club and have used ModernisingGovernment funds for the joint disability store. The partnership hopes for second round fundingfor an eCare store – defined as a secure data repository accessible by all community carepartner agencies – to support single shared assessment and other joint working.As part of the Integrated Scottish Criminal Justice Information System (ISCJIS) programme theCouncil is establishing common data standards and inter-connectivity between criminal justiceand related functions.223