Providing a customised electronic case management system for the immigration detention facilities managed by Serco in Australia. Vitro Case Management is an electronic solution, which supports Serco in their management of detainees through the life cycle of their stay. Vitro enables Serco to provide a greater continuity of care to detainees by having their complete case history available electronically, as well as management tools accessible through Vitro in a secure and protected way.

Background

Serco is a global company whose clients include national and local government and leading companies. Some of Serco’s frontline delivery includes providing safe transport, finding sustainable jobs for the long-term unemployed, helping patients recover more quickly, improving the local environment, rehabilitating offenders, protecting borders and supporting the armed forces. Serco manage 11 onshore immigration detention facilities on behalf of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in Australia. Serco treat the health, safety and wellbeing of the people in their care as paramount while seeking to innovate, develop and continuously improve their provision of services. Serco have a holistic approach to each case, gathering information for all aspects of care and security. Electronic data capture on Vitro was required for the processing of new detainees, the individual management of cases for people in detention, welfare management, program and activities, incident management and security checks. Serco required an electronic system that could manage all aspects of detainee case management and seamlessly integrated with the existing systems in use within their facilities. Serco had a number of existing systems in place for speciality areas that were working effectively. These systems required integration to Vitro so that an individual’s entire case could be accessed through a single source, Vitro.

Challenges

As with many organisations researching the procurement of an electronic system for managing their primary activities, they found there is not a fit-for-purpose system available on the market. The challenges Serco faced included;

• The requirement to access multiple systems with different interfaces increased the time employees spent on administration and led to no single source of case information
• Having multiple systems using a range of software, tools and services meant there was no single source birds eye view for each detainee
• Case files being broken into parts to ensure confidentially of certain aspects of care created risk of paper files being misplaced and no single source case file
• Large quantities of paper with the associated costs of management, storage and retrieval
• Large quantities of data only being available on paper leading to challenges in the analysis of captured information

Solution

Vitro will enable Serco’s approximate 2000 employees to manage Serco’s recording of detainee information electronically. Serco employees including personal officers, compliance officers, property department, programmes & activities co-ordinators can access, review and capture new data on tablets while providing care at the detainee’s side.

Vitro provides a comprehensive suite of Apps that have been custom built for Serco and manages the reception, induction, transfer and discharge of detainees throughout their facilities. They include dashboards which give an overview of key information for each detainee, allowing staff to identify risk quickly and easily, include trigger points for certain activities and ultimately create better outcomes. Apps are used for the individual management and incident management of each detainee and can be updated in real-time. Localised integration and workflows between Apps mean that core data is prepopulated and specified inputted information transferred between Apps, saving time on data entry.

Detainees can access limited areas of Vitro. Serco offer detainees programmes and activities all of which are managed through Vitro and can be customised by staff for detainees. Vitro manages and tracks detainee’s property from the time they arrive at a facility and integrates with Serco’s shopping system to manage a detainee’s purchases and allocations. Vitro follows a detainee’s life cycle in Serco, supporting and following the transfer of detainees as and when the situation arises. A detainee’s complete case can be viewed and edited from within the detainee dossier.

Vitro integrates with the full suite of Serco’s existing systems including its; Internal ticketing system, Detainee Shopping System and external websites that manage Visitors Applications or Complaints. This provides a complete a complete single source file for each detainee accessible electronically.

For more information about Serco visit; www.serco.com