Who was the customer?
A counselling service charity working for a local authority in South Wales who offer free and confidential counselling in schools and the community to young people up to 25 years old.
What were the requirements?
The charity required an update to a legacy Microsoft Access database system to manage referrals of young people who may require counselling. Once referred, the clients would be assigned to a counsellor who could then track and organise sessions with them.
The key feature of this database was to maintain accurate statistics required by both the local council and the government in strictly specified formats.
The prime requirement was to provide more open access to create enquiries and referrals, and to primarily reduce paperwork.
What was the solution?
Vale Software worked closely with the charity and analysed how their existing system was setup. By creating a web based software system stored on a secure hosting platform, a system was created which allowed more people to interact directly with the database, as opposed to the limited ability of the Access system.
Link officers within the schools and community centres are able to directly enquire about and refer clients for counselling, which the charity can then track and assign relevant counsellors accordingly. Each session with the client is tracked, and the stats gathered to comply with government and local council requirements.
Various reporting facilities are in place to extract data as and when required.