In 2018, NHS Digital and the Local Government Association announced Lincolnshire County Council as one of the nine Local Authorities to secure funds of up to £700,000 in the next phase of the Social Care Digital Innovation Programme (SCDIP).

With the funds received from the LGA, Lincolnshire established a project with Looking Local to implement BetterCare Finance. Lincolnshire will be using BetterCare digital financial self-assessment tool to speed up the financial assessment process and reduce the number of failed care packages. Whilst paying close attention to digitising a currently paper-based process, BetterCare Lincolnshire will focus on these 3 key themes:

• Reducing backlogs and improving efficiency within the Financial Assessment team
• Income maximisation for service users
• Provide transparency and control for service users

Looking Local have been working with Lincolnshire to create an entirely bespoke financial assessment online tool which reflects the local processes and needs. Lincolnshire are now preparing to launch BetterCare Finance to the wider community and have taken part in a SCDIP webinar to provide an update on their project so far.

Mike Ward, Information and Systems Officer, and Theo Jarratt, Quality and Information County Manager, from Lincolnshire have shared their journey with the online financial assessment tool. During the presentation, they gave insight into the problems they were having with their current financial assessments, such as the length of time taken to undergo a financial assessment as well as incomplete forms and the paper-based system they had in place. They discuss their decision making behind going forward with BetterCare Finance and provide a short demonstration of the tool and how they will be using it when they launch. Please view the video below to see a recording of the presentation.