The Cabinet Sub-Committee received a presentation on the Lyon system that was a low-code software solution used to build collaborative platforms and a smartphone app that social care, primary care, and local volunteers could use to support vulnerable individuals in the community.

Members were informed that the Pandemic had shown that there was a community willingness to help those in need but individuals often don’t know “where to start” or “who needs help”.  The Local Authority, Social Care, Primary Care do know “who needs help” but this information was often on a spreadsheet and it was difficult to know how to share that appropriately.

The solution was to build our own platform and app using the Alpha Software that provided cloud-hosted, low-code development platform with application interface.  This was able to be built alongside our existing social care, primary care and community partner relationships and managed low-level needs in the community, creating capacity in statutory services for critical pressures. 

Members were provided an overview of how the system worked, it was a secured stand alone webpage, the data shown to members was from their dummy system so no live data was shown.  The application showed the residents information who had contacted the council or needed help. Mapping tools were demonstrated as well as analytics linking volunteers to those who needed support.  An activity register was shown that recorded actions and any associated tasks that may come out of it.  The broad functionalities were shown to members. During the pandemic up to 200 to 300 were being recorded and tracked per day.  A mobile application has been continually developed to help volunteers for example a support request may be loaded by someone who need support such as contact or shopping.  The application would show registered contact details and location as well as how the task was being progressed.

The next steps was to apply for additional funding, building on the application and looking to take it out locally and nationally.  GDPR compliance was built in and thus it could be used by a range of partners.  A daft business case for future us was being produced. 

The Chairman asked what the major next steps were and was informed that more development capacity was required externally as well as developing in house capacity to use the system for other functions.

Cllr Price said one issue with the volunteering system was that a number of volunteers were now going back to work.  So would community grous be able to use the system to ask for volunteers.  She was informed that yes they had been working with some community groups on this and the platform was available to them on a restricted area that did not contain sensitive data.  They could have their own area of the system free of charge to help manage their volunteers.  Cllr Price recommended that there should be some investigation if this could link to the ‘next Door’ application.

The Cabinet Sub-Committee noted the update.