ECINS Heather Ette spoke to Andy Solomon, ASB Team Leader of the Community Protection Team at Ipswich Borough Council

HE: What issues were you looking to address when you first started using ECINS and have you found your use of it has expanded or developed into new areas since then?

AS:  Our issues were agencies not exchanging information, not having one central point to store Information and not being able to pull evidence together so that a quick decision on what actions to take could be made. Our use of ECINS has expanded in as much as we now have documents stored on one system, the number of docs that can be stored is limitless and it does make a very good evidence base. We can store such things as letters, ABC’s, Injunctions, Noise Abatement Notices etc.  We have used this recently to evidence why we should not house a couple who had caused some serious neighbourhood problems. We have expanded this system beyond the Police SNT’s into our Housing Team, Environmental Protection team, some of our Registered Social Landlords and I am hopeful we can expand it to the Lead Professionals involved in our Troubled Families work.

HE: What features on ECINS do you find particularly useful and helpful in your day to day to work?

AS: The tasking process cuts down on phone calls and e-mails explaining what the issues are, a quick note on a task leads them into the case/report e.g. “see case log” is much better than an explanatory e-mail. The running list of cases and reports is useful as I can see what is new and the ability to store profiles, cases and reports on an individual’s workload is useful in monitoring high profile cases.

HE. Which other agencies are involved in your ECINS partnership and how easy did you find it to get them on board? AS: Housing, Environmental Protection, RSLs are our main users. It wasn’t that difficult to get them on board the hardest challenge has been to convince them that ECINS is not a Police system and that they can legitimately update and input onto it. HE. How do you feel ECINS has assisted you in your multi-agency work, is it helping you to deliver a better service?

AS:  It is the having of all information under one case that is assisting in day to day work, we are not there yet as there is still some training issues to be sorted out with some agencies and we still have a number of new users to train and get on the system. It’s still a work in progress but those who have been users the longest can see the benefits.