Safe Steps community app

Plans for the prototype - September/October 2020

Discussions and planning meeting with frontline services have been ongoing through the last few months. Central to these discussions have the capacity of teams to engage with user testing in the coming months. To enable this, we have been working to identify the timelines for a prototype app being available for testing in advance to allow teams to have notice to be involved. We are also working with the Southwark Digital Service Design team to make the testing as efficient as we can. The results of this user testing will help us feedback to the developers at Safe Steps for any tweaks required to enable a smooth launch in January.

Alongside this, a new development team within Safe Steps have been working hard to develop the app to the design signed off in August. With this, we have been receiving some further information from the services who will be using the app, and from those who will be receiving referrals from the app. This is helping us to make sure that the referrals received from the app will be useful to both the person being assessed, and the teams providing the relevant falls prevention services.

We also spent time updating the Local Government Association and NHS Digital with the progress so far, taking part in our quarterly review of the expected benefits of the project. This was a useful session to discuss our project in the context of the wider Social Care Digital Innovation Programme (SCDIP). We are also preparing for our presentation of the project so far at the Social Care Digital Innovation - Sharing The learning event on the 2 and 3 of November.

Work on the data protection implications of the app have also continued to be scrutinised by teams in Southwark Council, Lambeth Council and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. This is helping us to ensure that people’s data will be securely stored, and only used where appropriate to the reduction of their falls risk. Agreements with the services providing support to the app are being consulted on to make sure that we all have the same understanding of how and why people’s data will be collected for the project.

This is an exciting time for the project: the prototype app is nearly ready to test, staff are excited to use it, and we are putting together the long term plans for evaluating its impact across Southwark and Lambeth. Presenting our progress in the project to the Social Care Digital Innovation - Sharing The Learning Event will be a useful space to hear the progress in other similarly funded projects, and get a feel for the wider network we find ourselves in.

Page last updated: 14 December 2020