The digital team for Adur and Worthing Councils has developed two online community response services using its low code platform.
It created the services in just 48 hours to supporting vulnerable people through the coronavirus crisis.
Paul Brewer, director for digital and resource for the two councils, said in a blogpost that the councils wanted to prevent volunteers and organisations from duplicating effort in some places while leaving gaps in others.
In response, it has built a request for community support service, which it is asking its own teams to use, and one for registering to volunteer, which has the capacity to upload lists of volunteers from other sources.
They have been built on the councils’ low code platform, developed by Netcall, which enables it to create digital services with a minimum of coding skills, primarily through a ‘drag and drop’ function. The councils of have been among the local government champions of such platforms.
Simple questions
The services include a series of simple questions to establish a need, a function to collect a volunteer’s photo ID or disclosure and barring service details, and an API with Google Maps to show the locations of volunteers close to a person making a request.
The information is reviewed by neighbourhood team leads to coordinate assistance, with the ability to see all the cases they have and available volunteers.
In addition, volunteers can see the tasks they have been allocated and provide notes back to the councils against the relevant cases.
Image by Kiran Foster, CC BY 2.0 through flickr
