BEST COVID-19 RESPONSE INVOLVING THE PUBLIC SECTOR
HMRC – Customer Insights Platform
As Covid-19 emerged last year, the Customer Insight Platform (CIP) team at HMRC delivered data insights to help prevent billions of pounds of fraud of the new Covid-response schemes. The stakes were high, with each decision potentially affecting tens of millions of people. The team was instrumental in ensuring the safe and secure success of these schemes, which would go on to ensure family members, friends and neighbours could continue to pay their bills and feed their families.
Priority Digital Health – Covid-19 Welfare Platform
At the height of the pandemic, Priority Digital Health rapidly designed and launched the Covid-19 Welfare Platform. In partnership with Provide CIC and commissioned by Essex County Council, the platform enabled vulnerable Essex residents to register for support or register as volunteers. Healthcare professionals could then match volunteers, in real-time, to support requests via the platform. Almost 9,000 vulnerable people have received support from over 3,500 volunteers via this platform. The Covid-19 Welfare Platform has now been further developed into the Essex Wellbeing service which allows Essex residents to access and be referred to the services they need.
RefuAid – Supporting Refugee Healthcare Professionals into Work
RefuAid support refugees and asylum seekers in the UK who are looking to return to higher education or their prior profession. Our solutions focus on the key barriers to integration and re-gaining independence: access to English language tuition, finance, requalification and specialist employment advice. In March 2020, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, RefuAid were inundated with requests from over 400 refugee healthcare professionals who were desperate to help out. Many of these doctors had worked in high-pressure/low resource environments such as warzones, so had valuable qualifications, skills and experiences that would prove vital in our response to the pandemic. As such, we have been supporting refugee healthcare professionals with access to clinical opportunities within the NHS throughout the pandemic.
From the direct recruitment of GMC registered doctors, to short- term clinical support placements, comprehensive requalification programmes and challenging restrictive Home Office policies, our work has tangible benefits on an individual and national scale:; we are helping to alleviate the pressures on our health service and its staff, as well as supporting refugee healthcare professionals with gaining vital UK experience. In addition, once working, the individuals are contributing to the UK economy and no longer reliant on welfare benefits.
Skills for Health – Free Covid-19 Awareness Course – Rapid Response eLearning
When Covid-19 broke out, life as we knew it changed forever, overnight. Everyone had a part to play and we knew we could support our NHS, health and care workforce with the rapid response needed. As the Sector Skills Council for Health and one of the UK’s leading healthcare online learning providers, we created a mobile and interactive training solution at pace to meet the increased demands on our key workers, faced with Coronavirus challenges. The training was extremely well received, that as a result, we had the opportunity to support many other sectors in the next mammoth task of returning to work in a Covid-19 landscape. Since the course launched on March 25, over 58,000 professionals from our NHS, health, care and wider public sector workforce signed up for this vital training.
Tute Education – Covid-19 Response
Tute is a high-quality online teaching and learning service that partners with local authorities, schools, parents and non-mainstream settings to improve all student outcomes and fill gaps in capacity and curriculum. Since 2012, our team of qualified teachers has provided lessons in a safeguarded online environment, delivering over 78,000 lessons for more than 12,000 students.
During Covid-19 the concern was that the learning development gap between students would increase. Tute recognised that it had the infrastructure and experience to ensure education equity was achieved. Like many other companies Tute was offered free of charge but it went far beyond this. The Tute team worked day and night to offer free training to teachers in setting up their online learning provision and remote teaching skills. Tute called all its schools to offer help and set up a Summer School for students to fill any gaps in learning. Its four-week Summer School Twilight, exam-board mapped English, maths and science revision programme is helping students catch up ahead of the November GCSE exams. Tute is passionate about helping all children to thrive and its commitment to this has never been more apparent than during Covid-19.
Wakefield Council – “Let’s Keep Going”
This campaign was Wakefield Council’s response to critical moments in the district’s COVID-19 story. We needed to protect our population’s health and well-being and support our local economy to thrive. Our aim was to encourage our population to follow COVID-19 guidance and get tested and support local jobs and businesses by building confidence among our residents. Our challenge was balancing the move forward when infection rates remained high and complacency was creeping in. We grounded our work in insight responding swiftly to dynamic situations, what worked well and what did not. Strength lay in Wakefield’s people and our partners, their local pride, their hopes and experiences; all adding to our web of insight and campaign reach.
We aimed to deliver a campaign that celebrated, encouraged, incentivised and reassured our citizens to keep themselves, and others safe whilst enjoying their work and leisure. We used social marketing principles based upon support, design, inform and control. We learnt that engagement is best when we feature real people, that behaviour change happens best with practical, accessible support and positive messaging. Most importantly, that the people of Wakefield are strong and resilient and we work best when we work together. The results exceeded expectations.
