Coventry City Council

500 BIA Backlog and Aftercare Service

Xyla Health and social care (formerly ICS Assessment Services) were initially commissioned by Coventry City Council to alleviate a waiting list of Best Interests Assessments in 2015, due to unprecedented referrals from Managing Authorities. To date, we have completed a total of 500 Best Interests Assessments, clearing the entirety of the Council’s pre-existing backlog.

Following the successful delivery of the project, we now have an ongoing support and maintenance package, managing their monthly Deprivation of Liberty Safeguarding referrals, while Coventry grow a permanent team of Best Interest Assessors who will be capable of handling all assessments in the future. Our role now is focused on providing an effective legacy for the Council. 

Key Achievements: 

  • Completed a waiting list of 500 DoLS cases 
  • All assessments cleared within 5 months using qualified Best Interests Assessors 
  • 98% of assessments accepted at first submission by the Council 
  • Dedicated aftercare service in place to deal with new assessments 
  • Quality Assurance feedback and amends resolved within 48 hours 

Our Approach: 

Despite the best efforts of the internal DoLS team, the Council were still left with a significant waiting list which, along with the increased assessment workload from new cases, presented a real challenge in fulfilling their legal obligations to service users via existing in-house capacity. 

We spent time working closely with the council to understand their existing DoLS process, their team’s capacity, and their specific requirements, and proposed an outsourced assessment model, utilising contracted, locally-based Best Interests Assessors to complete assessments. Our in-house administrative team would deal with the secure transfer of data and allocation of assessments to the BIAs. The completed assessments were quality assured by our DoLS Lead, according to the Council’s own standards, before being returned to the Council. 

Following the clearing of this waiting list, ICS have since provided an aftercare service for the Council, helping them to fulfil their legal obligations by clearing between 40-100 new assessments every month. The service continued for a fixed period of time, allowing the Council time to expand its permanent DoLS team.