From admin to impact: Dundee City Council’s journey with Beam Notes

As part of a recent Socitm Scotland webinar, Maeve Thomas, Senior Customer Success Manager at Beam, spoke with Neil Wallace, Practice Manager, Integrated Children's Services and Community Justice at Dundee City Council, about Dundee’s experience of using AI in frontline services.

For Dundee, one of the biggest pressures facing social work teams was the amount of time spent on administration. Workers were spending hours writing case notes, reports and documenting their work with service users, taking time away from the relationship-based work they had trained to do. Dundee started working with Beam Notes in Justice, initially using it for meetings, assessments and report creation. Following a successful first year, it expanded into Children’s and Adults’ services, alongside the council’s existing Mosaic case management system. Since going live in April 2025, teams across the council have made around 20,000 recordings, capturing thousands of hours, with an average practitioner feedback rating of 4.26 out of 5.

A big part of the work has been making Beam fit Dundee’s existing processes. Beam Notes produces case notes, assessments and reports using the council’s own templates and language, drawing on its policies, guidance and local services. Practitioners then review and edit the output before it is saved.

The challenge: too much time spent on admin

If you can imagine cast your mind back to the pre-Beam days, it'd be really lovely to sort of think about what the teams were struggling with at that time, what was maybe eating into their work weeks.

Neil Wallace, Practice Manager, Integrated Children's Services and Community Justice, Dundee City Council:

“Pre-working together, I first came across Beam through my Head of Service. We'd been at a national meeting, I think, where Beam Notes had been doing a presentation. He thought it was a really good possibility, and you came along and did a presentation to us as a senior management group. We all thought, ‘Wow, this could be a bit of a game changer.’ I had space in my budget in Justice and decided to consider it.

“Across Children and Families and Justice, we were all seeing the same thing: the amount of administrative work our workers had to do to maintain case management systems. Whether that was writing up case notes, doing reports, or documenting one-to-one work with service users.

“Everyone here will know the pain you go through when staff talk to you about what they trained to become social workers to do. It's relationship-based social work, that direct one-to-one work with service users, and so much of their time is taken up sitting at a computer doing administrative tasks rather than what they really want to do.

“That was what we were facing. And Beam Notes came along and looked like it could be a really good answer to that.”

Why a tool built for social work?

Why did you choose something purpose-built for social work rather than a more general AI tool?

Neil:

“At the time, Dundee City Council was introducing M365 across every service and there was obviously Copilot within that. The council was looking at the use of AI and what that could do on a corporate level.

“However, what made Beam Notes more appealing to us in Justice and Children and Families was that it was created by people who do this job. It recognised the kind of language that we use when we're undertaking work with service users, which perhaps things like Copilot may not recognise to the same extent.

“We felt that if we ran a pilot using Beam Notes, we could compare and contrast it with something like Copilot. And that's the process that we went through.”

Making AI fit the way teams already work

How important was it that Beam could produce outputs in formats your teams already recognise and use?

Neil:

“I think it's really important because workers see the results of what is input into Beam coming back to them in formats that they recognise and understand, because they're formats they're used to working with.

“When we started the pilot, the case notes template was a generalised one that was already available when you introduce Beam. My staff were very quick to come back and say, ‘Yeah, that one's really good, but would there be any chance of getting a reduced case note one so that it's not quite so verbose, and is more concise and straight to the point?’

“Beam were really good at going, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’ And really quickly we were able to create a much smaller case note template.

“In terms of reports, it was essential, from my point of view, that if we were going to run a pilot and see how much time could be saved for staff, anything generated had to fit into what we currently have.

“All of our templates are on Mosaic. What I wanted was for Beam to generate something that workers could review. We don't take the human out of the creation. Beam generates an interim Word document that workers then have to read and approve as appropriate and accurate. They're able to make any amendments as required.

“They then copy and paste that from Beam into the existing templates we have on Mosaic. Those had to be able to match each other so that workers weren't then going, ‘Oh, now does that go there? Should that go there?’

“So it was absolutely essential, from my point of view, that that was what we had.”

Getting digital and governance teams on board

Did your digital and IT colleagues raise any considerations that others should think about?

Neil:

“Nothing that they raised was something I hadn't thought about. They were involved in things like the dreaded DPIAs, so they were interested in data flow, security measures, retention periods, where things were stored and so on.

Neil's advice to other councils

What advice would you give a Scottish council that's where you were 18 months ago?

Neil:

“Just try it. It's better to dip your toe in the water. You don't actually realise how beneficial it can be to your staff until you do. It just saves staff so much time.

“When we did it as a pilot in Justice, initially it was only to a few teams. Really quickly, word spread about how beneficial it was. Then I had staff in Justice going, ‘When can we get it? When can we get it?’

“Then it spread to Children and Families and Adult Services, and they were asking, ‘When can we get this?’ because they were hearing really, really good things.

“So I would say dip your toe in the water, see what it's like, and then go for it.”

See what Beam could do for your service

If you’re looking at how AI could reduce the administrative load on frontline teams, get in touch with the Beam team to arrange a conversation or book a demo.

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