Organisation: North West London Integrated Care System

We led the Digitising Social Care programme, delivering projects that led to increases in data security compliance and digital social care record uptake, enabling care managers to spend less time on admin tasks and more time on providing quality care.

Challenge

North West London Integrated Care Board (NWL ICB) needed support to ensure that social care providers were linked into integrated digital systems, increasing productivity and efficiency.

Solution

We oversaw the Digitising Social Care programme, providing programme management and stakeholder engagement support, including delivering three projects:

1. A project to increase compliance with the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), an annual self-assessment that shows care providers are safeguarding data and protecting against breaches and cyber-attacks.
2. The Digital Social Care Records (DSCR) project, which aimed to increase the number of social care providers adopting digital records, with a national target of 80%.
3. Development of a digital and tech-enabled care collaboration strategy for the integrated care system.

In order to deliver these projects, we:

• undertook a desktop review of DSPT and DSCR compliance using national data, which we then refined through local surveys and engagement with local authorities
• used this information to develop delivery plans for both projects
• developed relationships with the 8 local authorities, leveraging their relationships to promote the benefits of both projects through email, engagement events and webinars
• oversaw match-funding applications for DSCR
• developed a process for approving DSCR funding requests and ensuring that these met all eligibility criteria
• tracked the progress of 722 providers, providing monthly and quarterly reporting locally, regionally and nationally.

Digital and tech-enabled care collaboration strategy

We delivered a system-wide workshop bringing together representatives from the ICB, 8 local authorities, and acute providers, to examine how they could collaborate better on digital and tech-enabled care.

In preparation for the workshop, we undertook a fact-finding exercise in which we:

• gathered a map of digital maturity in CQC registered providers,
• mapped systems used by NHS trusts and local authorities and their interoperability with the London Care Record, a secure view of people’s health and care information
• identified where funding was already committed to digital solutions in 24/25
• surveyed adult social care, health and digital leads on the priorities, barriers and opportunities for digital in their respective organisations.

Following the workshop, we presented partners with an accurate picture of the current system, alongside a validated confirmation of their priorities, barriers and opportunities to collaborate around tech-enabled care.

Outcomes

Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT)

• Overall DSPT compliance within NWL improved from 67% to 71% between April 2023 and June 2024, with care home compliance increasing from 71% to 91% and home care compliance increasing from 12% to 60% as a direct result of TPHC interventions.
• This has a direct impact on the quality of care provided, reassuring residents and their families that providers understand how to protect data effectively and follow best-practice guidelines.

Digital Social Care Records (DSCR)

• By 30 June 2024, 43 providers either had a digital social care record in place, or had been recruited on to the DSCR project, far surpassing planned targets.
• By 1 April 2025, 86% of all 669 NWL providers had a DSCR in place (including 78 care providers receiving support to implement DSCR), exceeding the NHS England target of 80%.
• DSCR implementation allows providers to make observations in real time and ensures that all staff members have access to the correct care record, improving quality and efficiency. These systems also reduce care managers’ admin time by 20-30 minutes a day, allowing more time to be spent on quality oversight and management.
• Finally, DSCR represents the first stage of care providers being able to share and receive information digitally, allowing them to integrate into future shared data platforms and shared care records such as the One London platform, providing care staff with the information they need at the point of care to inform their decision-making.

Digital and tech-enabled care collaboration strategy

Following our strategy workshop, the NWL system has agreed a series of next steps to understand data requirements, inform data sharing approaches and explore new ways of working across tech-enabled care prototypes.