Neil Thurlow, Head of Community Safety, Merton Civic Centre, Morden, SM4 5DX
Email: neil.thurlow@merton.gov.uk
Merton Borough Council have been developing their use of ECINS to assist in the case management process for ASB, using it to capture all of their enforcement activity. Neil Thurlow, Head of Community Safety has led the work to commission ECINS for Merton and has been instrumental in setting the programme up with ECINS and training staff.
Neil said ‘We originally introduced ECINS solely as a case management system but we have further developed it into other areas of work such as Domestic Violence MARACs. We are one of the first Boroughs using it for Domestic Violence MARACS working with victims and it is working well for us.
“E-CINS is allowing us to get a grip on open cases and enforce better than we did before.”
‘‘From a management perspective ECINS is allowing us to get a grip on open cases and enforce better than we did before. We are using it to issue CPN Warnings and Notices against beggars and to track details of brothels in the Borough. It is helping us provide the evidence we need to issue them with closure notices.
‘The next phase for our development of ECINS is to start meaningful cross border work especially with our neighbouring boroughs whom are exploring their own needs for new case management systems. We are working closely with Empowering-Communities to further this aim so that we can share information between us through E-CINS and better manage offenders together.’
“The next phase for our development of ECINS is to start meaningful cross border work especially with our neighbouring boroughs whom are exploring their own needs for new case management systems.”
ECINS was originally procured by Merton’s Youth Offending Team to address gangs and gang risk meetings. Once this has been set up properly the team will be using it for the MARVE (Multi-Agency Risk Vulnerabilities and Exploitation) Meetings which looks to support young people from 18-22 who are being exploited by drugs gangs or are exposed to harmful sexual behaviour.
Neil said ‘These meetings require a high level of administration and as all of the information is currently held on separate databases it requires some work to get all of the information into one place on ECINS.
‘Once this is done we will need to consider how we manage this information in the most efficient way and avoid duplication of effort.’
Merton are looking at a range of business areas where they can introduce ECINS to make their work more effective. Neil said ‘Next year we want to think about how we can use ECINS for areas of work such as IOM and open the system up to the police and our partners in Merton so we can all use it together for shared priorities. These conversations will take place in the Spring when we know what our priorities are for 2021.
‘There are many values in using ECINS. It’s a very clever system that can help achieve so much. When training staff however I feel it is better to break the benefits down to just those that are relevant to the audience you are working with as its capability can appear quite daunting. My view however is that I would rather have a system that we can build our use of over time as we develop and know it will do the job, especially as it is the same price as other systems that don’t do half as much.
“The benefits and the value ECINS offers is great.”
