Public Sector Transformation - Birmingham City Council Retail Model Pilot
Birmingham City Council prides itself in putting the people in its communities' first and providing the services that best fit with individual needs allowing them to live their own lives as independently as possible.
Birmingham was keen to understand how it could make it easier for people having difficulties with simple everyday tasks (such as eating and drinking, dressing and getting ready for bed, getting around safely at home and outdoors and washing and using the toilet) to obtain small or simple pieces of equipment that can make a real improvement to their quality of life.
Birmingham decided to pilot an innovative scheme using a complete out-of-a-box solution developed by Coleridge
The advantage of this approach meant the pilot could be up and running within weeks with little change or disruption to thier core processes.
It also allowed the six month pilot to be easily operated in two test geographic areas whilst their normal method of service delivery through the Community Equipment Loan Store continued unchanged in the remaining areas.
This made it easy to compare service levels and scheme benefits. In fact, customers in the pilot areas saw equipment provision lead times reduce from a typical 6-8 weeks down to a few days.
Chris Brothwood Group Manager in Specialist Care Services at Birmingham City Council says:
We needed to find a quick and easy solution that would enable us to test the concept of equipment being provided through retail with minimum disruption.
This Retail Model in a box approach gives us just that and meant that having a complete solution is enabling us to work through this approach knowing that when we hit challenges whilst doing this, we have respected partners on board who have the experience to offer solutions