North Lincolnshire are the latest Council to go live with our self-service digital financial assessment tool, BetterCare Finance. North Lincs went live with BetterCare Finance at the end of January 2021 and chose to come onboard with the platform for the following reasons:

• The tool gives individuals an indication of their potential contribution much earlier in the process
• Self-service, digital function supports their initiative of being a paperless council
• To bring the financial assessment to the beginning of the process

A key issue for the council was that people were often at crisis point by the time individuals contacted the Council, North Lincolnshire were keen to reach people before they got to this stage. Mags Gregg, Transactional Hub Manager, commented on North Lincs’ process – “we were finding that people were agreeing to services and then cancelling when they were advised of their contribution amount and said they could not afford to pay it. There’s quite a lot of work that goes into setting up services so our Adult Social Care teams wanted a solution that put the contribution amount up front so we were open and transparent. In terms of BetterCare Finance, it was the only product on the market that delivered everything that we asked for – which is why we went with the platform.”

North Lincolnshire soft launched internally in August 2020 and launched to the public at the end of January 2021. Emma Robinson, Financial Assessments Team Leader at North Lincolnshire Council, comments on their launch – “it was beneficial that the soft launch was longer than we initially anticipated because it gave us the opportunity to make sure that the staff were all 100% happy with it and we felt confident to go live to the public with it.”

“The feedback we’ve had from customers so far is that they have found the form really easy to fill in and like that they are able to get an indication of what they may be expected to contribute towards their services at the end. We’ve also found it’s helped to get particular citizens to agree to services. Both customers and staff have been really positive about the tool and where it’s going.”

The benefits of a self-service digital platform were highlighted as lockdown began last year, where North Lincolnshire’s postal system was centralised and their 28 page paper document became unmanageable. Mags Gregg said “we’ve been forced into working differently sooner than anticipated due to Covid, thankfully BetterCare Finance supported this new way of working.”

North Lincolnshire have been working with Jabran Khan, Implementation Specialist at Looking Local, throughout their process with BetterCare Finance – “Jabran has been fabulous and it has been so nice to work with him and to work with someone who understands our requirements and what we need to achieve”.

Thank you to Mags Gregg and Emma Robinson from North Lincolnshire Council for providing feedback.