Christmas training with ReACT

Hello – are we all looking forward to Christmas? I know we are here in the offices of ReACT. In the run up to Christmas some people are out getting their gifts, others are frantically writing cards; we at ReACT are out and about installing and training on ReACT 4.

Recently we have been rolling out the Implementation and Training on ReACT 4. This is generally a two-day process. On the first day, we are working remotely on the customer’s server to implement ReACT 4 into a full TEST environment using a copy of the latest LIVE database. These have gone well and now that we are gaining more experience of issues that differing server environments can throw at us, we are managing to complete upgrades comfortably within the scheduled time slot. The biggest stumbling block we are getting is servers meeting the pre-requirements to the upgrade – it might be worth double checking your server to make sure you meet it too!

The following day, one of our ReACT trainers is on-site with the customer to deliver a day of training. The training  typically consists of ReACT 4 Administrative / Configuration session, aimed at the Super-Users and then a session on ReACT 4 New Features aimed at the experienced end users. The Administrative / Configuration sessions are not only helpful to look at the new features we’ve included, but it also gives a chance to look at the current configuration while you have a ReACT Consultant with you. The second, end-user session, gives a chance to not only experience the new features, but also cement the correct usage of ReACT within the organisation.

We have found that the training is well accepted by all end users and each new feature generates interest from the delegates, not to mention any in particular, but the new Additional Notes control gets the biggest smiles!

Have you been using ReACT 4, why don’t you let us know what your favourite feature is so far? Try the Forums or send us a Tweet! @ReACTASB

On behalf of the ReACT Implementation Team, have a Merry Christmas.

Chris Powell.

New twist on social housing eviction for ASB

Image by johnmuk via Flickr

The Government has launched its new housing strategy today; a repackaged mix of old measures and new money to get more homes built. The headline-grabbing measures included;

• “pay to stay” proposals for high earners in social housing (an estimated 6,000 tenants earn over £100,000)
• A  400 million pound building fund, to create 16,000 homes
• A 500 million pound infrastructure fund
• A further £50 million to councils to bring more empty homes into use
• Right-to-buy discounts for council tenants, with the money released to be spent on new social housing
• Underwriting first time buyer’s mortgages for up to 95%

Whilst the Government plans for a building boom, they have also found time to tackle badly-behaved social tenants. Buried in the small print of the document, the Coalition plans to “widen the grounds on which landlords can seek to evict tenants, to include where they or members of their household have been convicted of the sort of criminality see in the recent rioting, wherever that took place .”  Up until this point, anti-social behavior outside of the tenant’s local area did not count. Now it does.

In one way, the Government’s hard-line approach is welcome. As our hot-spotting tracker on Google Maps can demonstrate, ASB is rarely confined to one street or estate. It’s just as easy to transport bad behavior to the town centre as the local park. In the past, ASB was seen as a civil matter, with little police involvement. However, with increased data sharing and best practice (see Mike’s article on the West Mercia seminar), this is changing. ASB is now seen as a criminal matter, to be dealt with at a local level by the newly elected Police Commissioners.

The danger is that the “fast track” approach does not give problem families enough breathing space to turn over a new leaf. A wayward teenager could quickly see their Friday night activity turn into a criminal conviction and a threat to the family home. (Remember the Government’s consultation on mandatory powers of possession for landlords, when tenants are convicted of ASB?). Turning such behaviour around requires time and energy, as the Family Intervention Project in Sandwell can testify.

Interestingly enough, the Government has not imposed any new regulations on private landlords, citing an 85% satisfaction rate from tenants.

By Natalie Phillips   

Related articles

• Police seminar on ASB trials (reactasb.wordpress.com)

NIFHA conference 2011 – how it went

Kate and Mike went to the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA) Annual Conference and Exhibition on 13^th and 14^th October (as reported on 10^th October).

Over 100 delegates and a sold out exhibition had an early start at La Mon Hotel in open countryside near Belfast. There was a full programme and delegates took every opportunity to view the exhibition and talk to those of us waiting patiently on our stands for each refreshment break when we could promote our products, in our case ReACT 4.We are very hopeful of adding new customers to our existing user base of three housing associations in NI.

It was most helpful to have Sharon and Nick Mackley from Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group, also on their first foray to Northern Ireland, alongside us especially as they very kindly transported our exhibition material thus allowing us to take the easy option of flying.

Over the two days interesting speakers joined the conference to offer their influences, of those including the Minister for Social Development, Nelson McCausland and the Chair of NI Housing Executive, Brian Rowntree, who both helped in giving us a greater understanding of the current housing activity in NI; with uncertainty of merges with neighbouring associations, directors and staff look to each other for guidance. The NI Executive are also waiting patiently to hear what the minister will decide for its future; suggestions of a split to include a strategic outlet and an operational landlords division seem to be at the forefront. David Orr Chief Executive from the National Housing Federation also joined the conference on the second day to share his experiences of change in England and the ways to adapt and deal with changing needs, demography in a challenging financial climate.

Strong feelings of uncertainty suggest that the associations are looking for support from the Department of Social Development to deliver a ‘Guidance Document’ to help whilst preparing the DSD inspections. It is clear that NI will be working hard to gather their thoughts and actions to create a more cohesive approach in dealing with the housing needs in NI through partnership and collaborative working.

We hope that ReACT will be able to play a part in supporting the associations by encouraging joint working when it comes to tackling ASB across NI. It was a thoroughly informative and successful conference that NIFHA had organised and made a success. We will be keeping a close eye on the activity and outcomes from the two days in Belfast. 

By Mike Blomer

2011 HouseMark Benchmarking

Another year has gone by, another set of figures submitted, collated and analyzed, all thanks to your efforts in benchmarking on your ASB statistics and to the work of HouseMark bringing these figures together to produce the annual report.

As you all know HouseMark ASB Benchmarking is the only cross-sector wide tool for social landlords to measure ASB across the UK. Now with over 200 members HouseMark are able to capture the success of housing professionals and their associations through individuals submitted and uploading PI’s throughout the year.

It is always interesting to see the trends that occur and appear over the years; this year is the fourth report to be issued with more uploads than ever. Social landlords are recording more cases each month than last year, with increasingly large caseloads, we are sure that this will continue to grow with greater emphasis on reporting and evidencing work.

Having said that, ReACT are really pleased that we gathered additional data from 22 of our customers as well as the uploads, which allowed HouseMark, for the first time ever, to record results on early interventions and evaluate what actions taken are more successful at that stage – thank you once again to all those whose data was used to collate these useful results.

We hope that we can continue to collate the success of early interventions from our customers and perhaps a whole range ReACT fields in the future to enable more effective benchmarking across the country. We will be working with HouseMark to develop this over the coming months and of course we will keep you all updated.

ReACT’s Early Intervention Statistics

ReACT users now represent the largest group of HouseMark members that use a specific ASB case management system. This allowed a realistic comparison between providers on the case details below.

Early intervention actions were:

• interview (39%),
• letters (31%),
• case monitoring (20%)
• face-to-face contact (9%)

On average, ReACT users logged 5 actions over 9 days to resolve a case, with very little variance in the dataset. This indicated that ReACT users are likely to following tried and tested actions, allowing them to rapidly close the case. Further analysis showed that early interventions, followed by mediation and police referrals proved to be the most successful options to resolve the complaint.

It is worth noting that the resolution rate for different types of ASB varied considerably, from 65% for prostitution to 99% for litter. As a rule of thumb, environmental types of ASB had much higher resolution rates than personal ASB, with an overall average of 89%.

Back to a brief look over the entire report which is available to download here.  Having looked at early intervention and its success, we can’t dismiss the outcomes of the growing number of cases practitioners are handling; the number of cases being resolved has risen around 10% since last year.

With an increasing emphasis on value for money, members can gain a realistic idea of what ASB costs (currently £331,000 per organisation) and ways to bring it down. The benchmarking service also ties in with the new Respect Charter, allowing housing providers to demonstrate their commitment to service and gaining value for money.

 

ReACT remains the only software provider to offer the Benchmarking automated Upload link and as you know, we will be working on developing a wider range of fields to report on through ReACT to get an even better snapshot of what is being done across the UK when dealing with ASB.

Recent Government announcements this year have already indicated that the use of ASB data will grow, with the arrival of the NSIR vulnerability definitions and the Risk Assessment Matrix, which both have been adopted and developed in ReACT’s latest version. Alongside the increase in reporting, social landlords are also expected to share more information (at a faster rate) with other agencies such as the police and social services – we want to work with our customers to ensure that the multi agency work is being reflected and evidenced for these future reports – multiple companies can be set up to allow for joint working and reporting. Speak to one of our team at 0121 384 2513 for more information

Watch the video

ReACT also hosted a webinar with HouseMark two weeks ago, looking at the benchmarking results and discussing future changes to the report. You can view it for free at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/438575966

By Kate Hill

Testing Times

Philip Egan, one of ReACT’s prolific  consultants, gives an overview of his recent work.

“Hello readers, I’ve got a bit of a mixed bag for you this month. 

The past few weeks have seen a combined workload largely relating to testing, reporting, and data analysis.  I’ll take each one of these elements in turn if I may and explain a little further into the work that I have been carrying out.

Testing

With the ReACT 4 release just around the corner and primary development complete we have been shaking and breaking the application to its core.  The internal testing started by designing and producing detailed test plans to make sure every element of the new application is tested under load, by users of varying security levels.  With the test plan complete and scheduled tasks allocated to various members of the team it was time to start the testing.  We have adopted a phased filtration approach, with the first failed tests being logged and fed back to the development team in one batch.  Once we have a new release with the issues addressed, due by the end of today, we have a second tier testing plan to follow which will entail re-testing the reported issues and following the entire test plan once more to ensure that none of the resolutions cause knock-on effects elsewhere within the application.  During this second phase of testing any issues will be logged and fed back and a similar pattern followed until every element of the application passes all tests under various environments to ensure that we have a sound and solid product ready for implementation from the launch made during our user groups in September.

 Reporting

As my main skill base is related to SQL Server development my primary role within ReACT 4 aside from testing is the design and development of the new reporting suite which we are incorporating into the product.  A large number of our support queries over the past two years and more have largely been caused by confusion over reporting figures and queries regarding why the numbers in one report don’t match up to the numbers in another report.  We have also had a large number of requests from people who like a particular report but would prefer to have the option to filter by the date the case was completed rather than the date the case was received.  To address these key issues we have reduced the reports available within ReACT to 4 primary reports available from the application menu. 

These reports consist of –

1. PIs
2. Satisfaction
3. HouseMark
4. Diversity 

Each report can be filtered by any or all of the following parameters, only the date range is mandatory –

1. Start Date
2. End Date
3. Company
4. Region
5. Area
6. Sub Area
7. Secondary Sub Area
8. Primary Officer
9. Date filter type (Date Received / Date Completed / Survey sent for Satisfaction Report

If further detail is required to investigate the actions / incidents / cases / individuals which make up a reporting figure then that number can be clicked on to drill down to a detailed list showing the makeup of the figure or slice of the pie.

• Any individual’s name can be clicked on to see the profile and history of the cases the individual has been involved in.
• Any case reference can be clicked on to see the case file with the details regarding that particular case.
• We hope and believe that the new reporting suite will be well received by Performance Managers and envisage that these reports will be run on a monthly or quarterly basis with figures produced for your board of directors and published to make like comparisons quarter on quarter and year on year.

Data Analysis

Taking a step away from ReACT 4 for a little while, during the past month I have also been involved in a sideline project working with John Wickenden, Knowledge Manager at HouseMark, to produce a more detailed analysis section of the “ASB Benchmarking Analysis of Results 2010/2011” with particular reference to the makeup of early intervention actions.

Following the kind contribution of datasets from the organisations listed below I developed a set of queries to extract overview data of cases, incidents, and actions from the past reporting year.  This data was collated and passed on to John to interrogate and pattern match to produce results which are now available in the report detailed above.

As I type the HouseMark ASB Benchmarking Conference is taking place down the road in Coventry so hopefully you will have access to the report now if not soon and find the detailed breakdown particularly useful.

The geek inside me particularly enjoyed this project and we hope to embark on a similar project next year and take it to another level with more in-depth analysis in other areas.  Any requirements or feedback on this matter would be appreciated.

Thanks to the following organisations who helped us with this project –

1. Acis Group Limited
2. Adactus Housing Association Limited
3. AmicusHorizon Group
4. Christian Action Housing Association
5. Community Gateway Association
6. East End Community Homes
7. Gateway Housing Association
8. Gloucestershire Housing Association
9. Green Vale Homes
10. Havebury Housing Partnership
11. Irwell Valley Housing Association
12. Newlon Housing Trust
13. NSHousing
14. Pennine Housing 2000
15. Poplar HARCA Limited
16. Severn Vale Housing Society Limited
17. Spitalfields Housing Association Limited
18. The Community Housing Group
19. Tower Hamlets Community Housing Limited
20. Venture Housing Association Limited
21. Westlea Housing Association Limited
22. Wolverhampton Homes

 Thanks for reading

Phil Egan

What are the advantages of the ‘ReACT HouseMark Consultancy Day’?

ReACT consists of a wealth of Configuration and Administration settings, that for the most part, remains behind the scenes.

You will most likely have set the Configuration up so that it reflects the way your organisation works and any policies and procedures you adhere to. At the end of each quarter you calculate what data is going to be sent over to HouseMark.

What you need to ask yourself is the following, are you getting the most out of ReACT for automated Benchmarking to HouseMark?

If you didn’t already know, ReACT has an automatic upload option to the HouseMark Website, direct from within ReACT. This means no more manual counting of figures over several hours, instead, you just need to run a report and then click a single button – a couple of minutes work!

For the Automatic upload to work at its best, there are several parts of the configuration that need to be “mapped” to the HouseMark reporting codes that we use “behind the scenes”. What this means for you, is that you get to have the system set up for your business needs, but behind the scenes, the benchmarking upload knows exactly what parts of your configuration to use for the different indicators. Configuration options include items such as Case Stages, Case Types Case Costs, etc…

What we can offer is a dedicated day, where our ReACT HouseMark Consultant will sit down with you to look at your ReACT Configuration and advise how best to use ReACT for reporting to HouseMark. On the day, all relevant Configuration and Administration options are addressed with a clear road plan of what needs to be amended or added to, to fully report to HouseMark automatically. We even show you ‘how’ to run the Automatic Upload and how you get to see and verify the figures before they are sent out from your ReACT.

The ReACT HouseMark Consultancy Day is ideal for both new customers and existing sites, even if you haven’t touched your configuration for a while.

New customer base will want to set up ReACT the best they can for both the automatic upload and also the business requirements.

Existing customers may have configuration from a period before ReACT could perform the automatic upload, so there will be plenty of new configuration items to be made and what better way to do it than have a representative from ReACT on-site with you!

If the ReACT HouseMark Consultancy Day is something you would be interested in finding more out about it, please get in touch with your Account Manager or ReACT Support and we will be happy to help.

SLCNG Annual Conference 2011

Many followers of this blog will know that ReACT is a major sponsor of the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group and, as such, we all look forward to their annual conference which, this year, will be at the St Johns Hotel, Solihull on Tuesday 1^st and Wednesday 2^nd November. This conference is a must for anyone involved with ASB and the annual awards, now in their third year, are fast becoming accepted as “the” awards for nationally recognising best practice.

Last year’s conference was, in my opinion, a very successful event and you should not be put off attending this year’s conference either by the cost or by the location. I understand that the conference fees have been held at last year’s level and the venue is very convenient being only 2 miles from M42 junction 5 with plenty of on-site free parking, just half mile from Solihull rail station and 15 minutes from Birmingham Airport and Birmingham International rail station. Birmingham city centre is 8 miles.

The conference is again being organised by CIH Events and, for many, an important point is that bar prices will be cheaper than last year!

More on the awards which fall into four categories as follows:-

The Tim Winter Award

This award is open to any employee of a SLCNG member organisation who has gone above and beyond their remit and has tackled anti-social behaviour effectively. This could be someone who has been innovative, someone who has been creative or someone that’s been simply determined and inspirational.

The Best Practice Award – sponsored by HouseMark

This award is open to any project or initiative demonstrating measurable improvement in reducing anti-social behaviour and increasing community confidence.

The project or initiative may be specific to a particular neighbourhood or may be targeted on a particular client group or issue. For example, teams working with vulnerable witnesses, young people or ex-offenders; or teams that focus on local priorities such as burglary, arson and hate crime, would all be eligible.

The Residents Award – sponsored by Glasgow Housing Association

Standing up against anti – social behaviour requires exceptional courage. This award recognises the bravery and courage of an person or a group of local residents who have taken a personal stand against antisocial behaviour.

The Team Award – sponsored by ReACT

This award is for a group or a team that has provided an exceptional service in resolving anti-social behaviour in a specific neighbourhood. The team could be located within a single organisation or be drawn from across a range of local agencies and the community and will have worked together to achieve shared goals and be able to demonstrate measurable results.

Eligibility and making nominations

Applications must be submitted by a member of the SLCNG and members can nominate to as many categories as they wish.

The Tim Winter award is restricted to ASB Practitioners from a SLCNG Member organisation.

Persons nominated for the residents, team and best practice awards may be residents, housing officers, ASB practitioners or employees of another organisation involved in tackling anti-social behaviour and building confidence in communities.

More information and nomination forms are available at www.slcng.org.uk The closing date for nominations is 2^nd September 2011.

Judging is carried out by an awards panel which makes the awards based on the information provided in each of the nominations received. I am pleased to say that I will again be a member of the judging panel.

By Mike Blomer, MBE

Half price reports offer: use it now or lose it forever

Over the past three months, we have offered 50% off all bespoke reports, allowing you to customise your ReACT and ReSOLVE facts to your heart’s content. Customers have used it to:

•  – Get two smaller reports for the standard price of one
•  – Extend a bespoke project, whilst staying within budget
•  – Fund extra training from the savings

We have no restriction on the length or type of custom reports that you require – they are all discounted at 50% of our standard price. However, we will be ending the offer on the 31^st of March, so you will need to put your orders in before that date, to purchase them half-price. For more information and a discussion about the savings you can make, please contact Paul Johns on 0121 384 2513.

ReACT’s risk assessment webinar

By now, you will know how ASB recording is changing – but what impact will it have on your systems and processes?

On Tuesday 22nd February, we will answer that question. Our expert consultant, Paul Johns, will be covering the new categorisations and the changes we have made to ReACT as a result.

See the recorded webinar

By Natalie Phillips

ReACT’s 2011 Webinar programme

Our free webinar programme is up and running, with the full schedule available on our website and on our forums. For the first time, we are hosting  four exclusive webinars for ReSOLVE users, whilst our ReACT customers can expect a different session every month.

Upcoming webinars include:

 11am on 22nd February: ReACT Risk Assessment

10am on 28th March: ReACT and the ASB Review

11am on 12th April: ReACT HouseMark Uploads

11am on 26th April: ReSOLVE Basic Case Entry (for new users)  

A couple of our delegates have reported problems with firewalls, when they tried to joining webinars in the past. We recommend checking with your IT department the week before the webinar, using GotoWebinar Technical Specifications.

We look forward to seeing you there.

By Natalie Phillips