Piloting AI in social care: advice from Vale of Glamorgan

During a Beam Notes pilot at Vale of Glamorgan Council, one social worker hadn't tried the tool, citing that they were too busy and behind on assessments. Jason Bennett MBE, Head of Adult Services & Vale Alliance, saw this as a reason to keep going. Falling behind on case notes was the very thing the pilot was there to help with.

His teams now use Beam Notes across adults' and children's services. In the pilot, practitioners submitted assessments and reviews to the case management system 36% faster. Here's what Jason would tell other leaders who are considering a pilot.

Pick the hesitant colleagues as well as the willing ones

Jason chose his pilot group on purpose. Practitioners came from hospital discharge, intake and assessment, learning disability, and long-term care teams. He made sure the hesitant ones took part. "Pick your team really carefully," he says. "There's no point just picking the willing people. You have to have that spectrum to understand how it's going to work across the teams." Jason wanted the full range of reactions before a wider rollout. "I needed that information, because if I was going to roll this out, I needed to know what people were worried about." In his view, if hesitant colleagues see the benefit, "it'll work across your service."

The social worker who said they had no time

Jason sat down with the social worker to find out why they hadn't tried Beam Notes. They were behind on their case notes.

"I sat down and said, 'That's the whole reason for it,'" Jason says. He asked the social worker to pause their work and try one small thing: dictate their outstanding case notes into Beam Notes instead of typing them up.

"A week later they came to me and said, 'it's transformational,'" he says. "You just saw their stress levels reduce." Jason says what he saw in that one person counted for more than any usage figure.

Make the case on staff wellbeing

"There is no intention to reduce my staff," Jason says. "The intention is to allow them to have more time to work with people and to do better assessments."

The Vale of Glamorgan has a growing older population, and Jason doesn't expect to have enough social workers to meet that demand. He wants to give his team better tools.

"Return on investment in terms of staff wellbeing is really, really much better," he says. "Staff are much happier." He says that one of his highest users of Beam Notes felt strongly about the tool. "If we took it off them, they didn't want to do their job any more."

Bring digital and IT colleagues with you

Some people working in technology at the council were more nervous than Jason was, because of questions about AI ethics and data governance. He worked through those concerns with colleagues and explained why he thought the approach was safe from a practice point of view. Then he took his proposal to cabinet, which backed the pilot.

That's the reverse of what he sees elsewhere. "In other places it was digital and IT pushing this forward with social work practitioners being reluctant, and we were the other way around."

Managers and other teams get time back too

Jason uses Beam Notes in his own supervisions. "My supervision notes were superficial, because of time and capacity," he says. Now he says they're comprehensive, and he can ask for a more concise version when he needs one.

He values being present. "The great thing about supervision when you're not writing notes is that you can be present in the moment." Social workers, occupational therapists and others work in a challenging environment, and managers need to be present for them too. "It frees capacity in places we probably didn't think of."

Jason was also head of housing before this role, and he sees the same pattern there. Housing officers get absorbed in applications the way social workers get absorbed in assessments. "We were giving too much time to paperwork and not enough time to people."

Ask what support comes with the tool

Jason singles out three parts of the support around Beam Notes:

• Regular contact: Weekly meetings ran through the pilot, and he still has fortnightly meetings in his diary with the contract manager.
• Templates at no cost: "If we haven't got a template right, it doesn't cost us money to change it.”
• Visibility: He can see on a dashboard who's using Beam Notes and how often, so he can judge value for money.

What to take from Vale of Glamorgan

Jason's advice is practical. Include the people who are unsure, and judge a pilot by how staff feel as well as how long tasks take. The social worker who had no time tried one small change. A week later, they told their head of service how much it had helped. If you're planning a pilot, start with the people who are least sure it will help. Their feedback shows what the rest of your service will need.

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