Headway Essex – Case Study

Headway Essex began working with StartSafe in early 2021 and are enthusiastic advocates of StartSafe’s comprehensive Health and Safety management system.

Established in 1985, they offer day services, activities and support in the community to hundreds of clients, family, friends and carers across Essex each year. To ensure they can provide paramount levels of care and support they employ a rigorous Health and Safety program across their sites, facilities, equipment and vehicles.

Implementing StartSafe

Having struggled with a paper-based approach to log, track and manage their Health and Safety requirements, StartSafe provided an opportunity to bring together their requirements into one digital platform. Despite the challenges of Covid restrictions, StartSafe’s experienced team implemented the solution which addressed several key requirements and very quickly proved the decision to switch to a digital approach was the right one.

Staff quickly adapted to the new system and the transition away from paper and separate digital records was an easy one to make. With the support of the StartSafe team they are now building and developing their own inspection templates and reports and expanded its use across all aspects of Health and Safety within the organisation.

The Value of StartSafe

StartSafe has facilitated a number of significant and measurable improvements to Headway Essex, as Human Resources and Governance Manager Nicki Bryant, who led the StartSafe project, explains:

“Having successfully implemented StartSafe we have reduced the time spent managing our Health and Safety requirements by 80%, a huge saving. Reporting internally to the board and demonstrating compliance for external auditing and insurance purposes is no longer a laborious process and can be achieved at the touch of a few buttons in the online dashboard. Having live visibility of inspections as they happen and knowing everything is logged, tracked and reported on centrally, as I need it to be is reassuring, as this was a challenge before we introduced StartSafe. If an issue is found during an inspection the site manager receives an automatic notification so that it is addressed and dealt with promptly, which is critical to ensure our staff team and clients are never put at risk. We would never go back to our old ways of working having seen the benefits and improvements StartSafe has delivered.”

Staff completing inspections are also seeing the benefits. The user-friendly StartSafe app makes completing inspections simple and intuitive, demonstrating they are meeting and delivering against required standards without ambiguity. As reports are generated automatically once inspections are completed, the manual process of report creation is removed and negates errors or omissions, which previously crept in when transferring from a paper form to a digital record. The records are more meaningful as they state who carried out the check and at what date and time and include the GPS location of each check that is logged. This means should Headway Essex ever need to evidence that checks have been completed they have a foolproof method of doing so.

The Future

From implementing new inspections such as air-conditioning maintenance checks and hoist checks, through to deploying StartSafe at their new day centre and exploring how scheduling functionality can be utilised, Headway Essex are continuing to expand their use of the system.

Following this successful deployment, StartSafe is now embarking on a program to engage with other Headway divisions across the country, sharing Headway Essex’s success and exploring how the charity can benefit from the solution nationwide.

Through the initial project and this widening engagement, StartSafe is proud to support Headway Essex in its mission to ensure that everyone living with an acquired brain injury can live a fulfilling life and that families and carers are better able to cope within their caring roles.