Last Summer our Outreach Service began working on a new pilot scheme with an organisation called Timewise Foundation, who are supported by JP Morgan Chase Foundation.  The pilot launched in September and around that time we mare made aware of an opportunity to potentially be part of JP Morgan’s 2016/17 Force for Good programme, in which project team of new graduates and more experienced JP Morgan tech talent use their skills to help ‘social good organisations’ (like ourselves) to develop technological solutions to some of the issues we face.

In our case we asked if Force for Good could make a difference to us was by using their team of IT experts to build an app to our specifications and improve the flexibility and responsiveness of our rostering system for the Outreach Service, something which could have a major organisational benefit.

Initially we hoped that the team could build a whole new system for us to coordinate our workforce but it quickly became apparent that the hope was somewhat over-ambitious and impractical for the 6-8 months allocated to the project. The Team worked closely alongside Jacek, our Team Administrator, on a weekly basis to identify and prioritise what could be done to improve our current system.

In relatively short time the project team was able to deliver a piece of software that drastically reduces the time it takes to produce our accessible / user friendly rotas for service users from 3 days to 30 seconds!!

In recent months the goal has evolved into incorporating this app into our functional rostering system.

Force for good was also able to help us migrate some of the data we held in separate spreadsheets into the system so the entire rostering process is more pleasant and intuitive for the user as well as much less time consuming. The solution is robust and has scope for future development and we couldn’t be much happier with the results.

The project is due to finish in the next 2 weeks, and will be highlighted and celebrated as part of the Force for Good Project Showcase on June 2nd.

Thank you to JP Morgan Chase Foundation, all our friends at JP Morgan and of course our other friends at Timewise Foundation. It’s been great.

Jacek and some of the the Force for Good team in action

Rathbone is supporting a Department of Education campaign “Together, we can tackle child abuse”  which aims to raise awareness and encourage members of the public to report child abuse and neglect.

The campaign aims to encourage the public to report their concerns in order to get help to children more quickly. The aim is to create a new social norm around reporting and tackle the barriers that stop people taking action.

Lambeth Council, which is also supporting this worthwhile campaign, also has some very useful information pages on its website which explain what to do if you suspect a child is at risk.

We are proud to announce that Rathbone’s Youth Management Team have won this prestigious London Youth award for 2017. The Youth Social Action Award focuses on organisations that have gone above and beyond the ordinary in their dedication to inspiring and supporting young Londoners to lead change in their communities and their own lives.

The Youth Management Team encourages and supports young people who wouldn’t otherwise get involved in social action to have a say on and impact the services available to young people in their local community. This is done through involvement in forums, funding presentations and empowering young people to take on leadership roles within the Youth Club.

We are extremely proud of the young people, youth workers and volunteers and this great achievement!

Winners at the 2017 Awards at the Amnesty Centre on 23rd March 2017