Ian is a Chief Inspector in Staffordshire Police and is currently working as a Local Policing Team commander at Tamworth. He has been with Staffordshire Police for 24 years and worked in various roles including Local Policing, CID, Communications and Professional Standards.
Tamworth has an established Community Safety Hub that is situated at the police station and comprises partners from Police, Borough Council, Housing, Voluntary Sector and Neighbourhood Watch. The work of the hub over the last 18 months has seen the establishment of a daily management process that is ensuring a timely partnership response to all aspects of vulnerability, that is being enhanced by the use of E-CINS.
Ian’s Presentation
Chief Inspector Coxhead introduced Tamworth’s Community Partnership Hub which was established in March 2010 and explained how co-location of the different agencies involved was key to its success.
Co-location – What does it deliver? •Improved coordination and delivery of partnerships at a tactical/operational level •Improved information sharing and access to information (within the framework of information sharing protocols)
- Improved community safety across the Borough of Tamworth by identifying and responding to real time crime and disorder issues
- Enables more effective and efficient daily briefing and tasking meeting
Ch Insp Coxhead said “The Community Safety Hub was there to give us an improved co-ordination and delivery of partnership activities at a tactical/operational level. What does this mean? We were able to be sitting in a room talking to each other!”
Dare to Share
We’re there to deliver the best services and also to get offenders back on track and we’re able to do that within a very tight information sharing protocol. Nobody in the room sits outside of our information sharing protocols, they cannot act on conversations, they can act on disclosed information only. Everybody understands that we have a clarity of purpose and a clarity of delivery so we all know where we’re working from and how we work together.
What it has delivered for us – the co-location – is, without doubt, improved community safety, improved identification of vulnerability, improved action of vulnerability and improved delivery around and across the partnership “ stated Coxhead.
He then went on to explain how the Hub became a 20 minute daily meeting where all aspects of work is discussed, from crime through to ASB, hate crime, domestic violence and concerns for safety. This has enabled vulnerability issues to be picked up because they are identifying people more quickly.
“We have Top 50 locations we have Top 50 callers, we know each and every location, caller and action we are doing. Within the Hub there are hub members and regular attendees from ASB officers, D&A and DV support workers, voluntary sector workers, mental health workers, adult and social care, Fire and Rescue Teams, the list is endless.
We have a system where people impart their information sharing, they drop in, they can have conversations and it is working”.
Coxhead explained the purpose of the Hub Meetings:
- Sharing Real Time issues to identify issues and vulnerability across Tamworth in respect of Victims, Offenders and Locations Apply and implement appropriate problem solving response through joined up working
- Early identification and intervention through appropriate referrals
“At our 20 minute Hub meeting we talk about everything across the board, the full spectrum because it is about dealing with victims and offenders and delivering the best service we can. We ‘dare to share’ information in real time because we want to identify those vulnerability issues and by having the people in the same room in a team it enables us to share quickly, respond quickly and deliver quickly and we always use problem solving – who is the most appropriate person? It isn’t always the police, there are a lot of other agencies who have responsibility and we now have their buy-in to it.
When people come to our Hub meeting they sit down, listen and say ‘this is so simple, its brilliant!’.”
Case Management and E-CINS
Ch Insp Coxhead explained that whilst the Hub Meeting was working well the big gap was an effective case management system.
How Does E-CINS Work for Us?
- Allows clear processes for a multi-agency approach to case manage victims and offenders
- provides a risk assessment framework which gives the ability to identify persons and cases of greatest risk and vulnerability
- Has enabled time and efficiency savings realised through reduction of meetings
Coxhead recalled “We had spreadsheets showing we were all doing different work and one day our Chief Superintendent handed me a piece of paper about E-CINS. I looked at it sceptically and read it. I went on to the demonstration site to see what it was all about and it started to click with me. We were looking at anti-social behaviour victims and perpetrators, hate crime victims and perpetrators, DV victims and perpetrators, vulnerability, everything was on the E-CINS gallery, it was all there for us. We were working in a Hub, we were all working off different computer systems but through the use of that worldwide web we were able to all access the same information. We were able to task people, we were able to get answers to tasks, we were able to speed up and deliver a really efficient process. So we came out of co-location, a Hub meeting, to “we need something to deliver” but equally it could work the opposite way around. I think if you got E-CINS it then drives you into “we’ve got partners here” lets get them in the same room having real time conversations and get that delivery across the systems.”
Clear Processes – E-CINS, for us, gives that clear process and clear management of victims and offenders and also locations now as well, which is vital. It means pulling together cases and, through the use of the system, we are able to map victims against offenders, victims and offenders against locations and ensure we’re getting the right sort of delivery.
Coxhead concluded “And finally, saving time on meetings. Yes we have a 20 minute meeting every morning but that is about setting the tone and setting the delivery. E-CINS has given us real-time interventions, it’s speeded up processes in terms of interventions, taking away the time that we spend with individuals because we’re solving their problems quicker. We’re dealing with issues of vulnerability quicker.
We’ve got four of the people now around the table that I would like. Mental Health last week signed up to E-CINS and they’re quite happy to use it. Adult Social Care are about to sign up to use it, and once they see it and once they understand it, and anybody will tell you, it is a very easy system to use which delivers everything you want. It’s given the glue to our hub and co-location because it allows us to see everything that we’re doing rather than all of us working off our own individual computer systems. Also the beauty of it is, around information sharing, you only share it if you want to. You can put reports on E-CINS that only you can see but everyone else can see that you’ve worked on that case.
I really don’t see what the information sharing issues are because we’re all signed up to protocols, we’re all sharing information together and if we get the processes right it could be quite easy to structure delivery around it. E-CINS has without a doubt been the glue to our partnership delivery.