Devon County Council is required to have 80% of enquiries resolved at the first point of contact.  As the vast majority of public contact is made by telephone, the Social Services Public Access Programme was developed in 2005 to help meet this target by routing all adult social care calls (older people and physical & sensory disabilities) through the Care Direct contact centre.  Before this change, only one in three callers to some local offices were getting through first time.  Now Care Direct maintain a call-handling rate of well over 90%, and aim to provide callers with the answers to their enquiries at the first point of contact.

Care Direct advisers also offer people of pensionable age a Department for Work and Pensions welfare benefit check, which the local Social Services offices cannot offer.  This has resulted in substantially increased benefit take-up for older people across Devon.  

Care Direct staff formed the first section of the Corporate Customer Services Centre, further developing their role as ambassadors for excellent customer care.  The Centre is located at Tiverton, and was launched in 2006.

Whilst the programme of transferring Devon's adult social care calls to Care Direct was underway, other improvements for clients were developed:

• Support to Carers
• Callers identified as being at risk of falls referred to the Health Falls Register, where advice and help is provided

Following on the work of the Public Access Programme, further benefits to our clients are being developed through the Business Improvement Group:

• A Disability Information Service, meeting a longstanding demand for a similar service to that provided in Plymouth and Torbay.  
• Callers to the Sensory Services will benefit from the holistic service provided through the Customer Services Centre
• Centralisation of Blue Badge administration
• A central point for Community Equipment Service collection
• Emergency Duty Team to benefit from the extended opening hours of the Corporate Customer Services Centre
• LinkAge Plus - a government initiative to promote 'one-stop shops' for older people

These developments, along with continued simplification of the Social Services referral process leading to some assessment and switching on of simple services, will all help to improve the customer experience.