Link Maker provides a fully serviced IT solution for regional and national collaborative services and consortia. Individual and organisational accounts can be flexibly inter-related and nested, so that structural change can easily be reflected on, and supported by, the platform. The benefits include:
- Collaboration tools for licensed organisations are included with their existing features
- A mature system with broad, sophisticated functionality
- Automatic connectivity with other services and collaboratives on the platform
- Sector-leading security assured for all parties on one common platform
- Full agency-verification and on-going support for all users
- A branded, custom online portal for staff and families
- Visibility and control over placement activity within the service, and externally
- No additional set-up, development, support or hosting costs
Please see the functional outline below, or contact us to discuss your needs.
- Established functionality. Full features for sourcing and providing placements are available according to the licences held by each organisation.
- Visibility of in-house placements. Profiles of both children and families within the collaboration are presented to appropriate users.
- Centralised roles. Family-finding and commissioning can be conducted on behalf of multiple organisations, by individuals with relevant permissions.
- Family-finding events. Promote and manage attendance for joint events such as exchange days, activity days and profiling evenings.
- Centralised oversight. A range of user-level permissions can be applied, granting the ability to view activity against all cases.
- Help individuals. The journeys of individual children and families can be tracked by appropriate users, so that advice and assistance can be given where needed.
- Monitor practice. Practice trends and performance can be tracked in real time, to inform training and communication needs.
- Monitor sufficiency. The current availability of, and need for, placements are presented in live dashboards and reports to inform local recruitment.
- Formatted reports. A range of reports, including full-colour charts, can be run to present a range of key indicators of practice trends and placement activity within the collaboration.
- Access to full data. Appropriate users are able to download complete child-level or family-level data from within the collaboration. This data can then be manipulated and analysed to provide any indicators or trends required.
- Selective availability. The way that accounts on Link Maker are connected provides a unique opportunity for owning and presenting data flexibly. For example, specific child-level and family-level data can be owned by an authority, while aggregated data, or certain data items, can be visible to a regional service or national body.
- Statutory returns. Data fields for statutory returns can be configured so that required information is continually collected against cases by relevant users. Complete data can then be downloaded when required, with a live snapshot available at all times. Key indicators can be aggregated regionally and nationally and presented live to statutory bodies, or the public.
- Support events. Promote and manage attendance for joint events such as family fun days, support groups and training workshops.
- Provide advice online. Secure forums can facilitate online discussions, supporting targeted groups of families.
- Peer support. A range of fora, potentially targeted at different areas of need, can be provided to families within the collaboration to share support and make contact with each other.
- Manage recruitment and assessment (2017). A prospective family can register their details online, with their case then flexibly managed within the collaboration through recruitment, assessment, matching and post-placement support.
- Practice fora. Any number of topical fora can be provided for staff with the collaboration, for secure discussion of practice and policy matters.
- News & announcements. Live updates from the collaboration can be presented to all staff via their home pages, drawing attention to new resources or developments.
- Online resources. Minutes, presentations, training notes and other resources can be uploaded and made available to all staff within the collaboration.
