ECINS Helps UK Community Safety Partnerships Manage the Risk of Anti-Social Behaviour and Reduce Community Harm

Surrey Community Harm and Risk Management Meetings (CHaRMMs) are monthly meetings with partner agencies to talk about the reported anti-social behaviour issues within the borough in order to reduce community harm. The mission of CHaRMMs is to collaboratively address the perpetrators of anti- social behaviour (ASB) and reduce the negative impact on victims by creating solutions that manage risk and disruptions.

Situation:

• The UK Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is enacted to tackle ASB and youth crime, encouraging collaborative crime prevention partnerships, and responding to the public’s call for comprehensive legislation to improve community safety.
• Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) are developed to focus on local ASB and the impact it has on victims and the community.
• Community Harm and Risk Management meetings (CHaRMMs) are multi-agency partnerships formed to focus on dealing with individuals of concern in each district or borough.

Challenges:

• The Surrey CHaRMMs are a collaborative undertaking that relies on the expertise of a multi-agency group of partners to address issues and develop solutions for anti-social behaviour, however the subject matter of their work is confidential and they lacked a secure method of case management and information sharing.
• In-person sessions could last four hours or more, as various stakeholders from the county council, police department, local boroughs, housing and education associations, and other community support organisations would need to hear background information and status updates from each party on new and existing cases in order to be able to develop solutions.
• Recordkeeping and information sharing was ad hoc across the meetings which was not ideal for collaboration.

Solutions:

• The Surrey ASB and Community Harm Reduction Group decided that they need to prioritise efficiencies in their program and streamline their meetings to be more solution-focused by equipping stakeholders with the information they needed to know before each event.
• ECINS was contracted to develop a custom multi-agency solution to enable the multitude of support partners to collaborate securely and overcome efficiency challenges.
• Working with the CHaRMMs operations team, ECINS rapidly migrated 20,000+ cases (mostly from spreadsheets) into CHaRMMs bespoke system and deployed 1,000+ accounts.
• ECINS collaborated with the Surrey team to develop a bespoke e-learning package that enabled various specialised training modules and sessions for the CHaRMMs partner user network.

Outcomes:

• ECINS allows CHaRMMs’ network of partners and users to manage referrals directly within a secure, multi-agency system where they can collaborate on solutions to protect the most vulnerable members of their communities.
• The Surrey CSP team has embedded the ECINS solution into their partner network with processes and procedures in place that will allow them to evolve as their programs and initiatives scale.
• ECINS has now been applied to other initiatives, including protecting individuals under the Victim and Witness Care Unit, performing graded care assessments through the Surrey county council for the National Society of the Protection of Children, and for Bridge the Gap, a program that allows practitioners from across the Surrey partnership to refer disadvantaged people with a range of issues into support.
• The Surrey ASB and Community Harm Reduction Group is looking at the option of utilising ECINS to provide residents and communities with a digital means of reporting ASB to community partner agencies as suggested under the new ASB Action Plan.
• They are developing standard metrics by which they can measure the impact of this technology in real terms and produce reporting that will support the efficacy of their work to secure future funding.