Support provision configuration management overview
The process of support provision management has a number of contributory factors that need to be configured at the outset in order to inform daily activities, operations and functions. These configuration components enable the housing organisation to define specific parameters in line with their own procedures and standards, underpinned by the creation of internal Service Level Agreements that provide monitoring and tracking controls for all support provision cases. Additional values and attributes can be appended to the records at any time, as required, although maintaining comprehensive information from the start will reap its own rewards. There are three key components that fall under the category of support provision configuration management: support provision escalation rule maintenance, support provision task maintenance and support provision type maintenance. When devising support provision types and the underlying tasks that will drive forward their progression, it is important to remember that they should be solution-oriented, aimed at channelling services and partner agency expertise to tenants with an identified need. Their inherent structure and usability should also focus on making processes easier, more streamlined and at the same time empower housing officers to deliver tailored and effective services to those most vulnerable.
Support Provision Escalation Rule Maintenance - All support provision cases launched in response to an identified customer need - either to coordinate an initial assessment or to implement a targeted support plan - can be service level driven and form an integral part of a wider Service Level Agreement (SLA). Escalation rules define the automatic events to be triggered in the instance where a case or inherent task exceeds the SLA target, or reaches a predefined warning period. The escalation process would typically notify the case or task owner, and potentially members of a stakeholder group using customised communication templates. The escalation process is not just a one-off exercise but rather subsequent follow-on rules can be defined and triggered in the event that, say, a task has stagnated beyond a defined period. Open cases and tasks can therefore be continually tracked and actively progressed through to a successful outcome.
Support Provision Task Maintenance - A task is a specific activity that must be undertaken as part of a formal assessment process or related service-oriented action, and for which a support provision case has been generated. Each support provision case is steered by its associated classification type, which in turn comprises one or more related tasks, and it is these tasks that define how the case will be progressed. Any number of discrete tasks can be linked to a support provision case, with a specific attribute governing whether each can appear more than once within the same execution plan. Recurrent tasks can also be configured to facilitate specific activities that need to be repeated over a defined period, or until such time as a particular outcome is achieved. In structuring all the activities that are relevant to a case, tasks can be added manually at the point of need, or they can be linked automatically by virtue of their existence within an underlying workflow path. Dictated by the nature of the assigned tasks, dependencies can be configured between them to restrict the point at which related tasks are commenced.
Support Provision Type Maintenance - These are the building blocks of all support provision cases - categorised as Assessment or Support Plan - and represent the structured framework used to define the breadth of services and agency signposting opportunities that are provided to tenants through the housing organisation. Any number of customer-facing and internal provision types can be created to cover all the core and subsidiary services available through the housing organisation, mapping out procedures and proactive response mechanisms that will steer tenants towards independent living.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of support provision configuration management, including: