Spotlight On... Local Authorities

Local Authorities

Local authorities are the pillars of our communities, providing vital services and support. And nowhere is the pressure to evidence the impact achieved through the use of public funds higher than in this sector.

From town and district authorities to London boroughs and county councils, Upshot provides the essential tools to manage council delivery, monitor commissioned services and report on the outcomes achieved against local and national strategies. Our system is now employed in almost 60 local authorities, across a wide range of services.

Here we highlight just a few of these inspiring programmes...

Youth Services - Conwy County Borough Council

Our friends at Conwy County Borough Council have been using Upshot since 2021 to capture their essential Youth Service. A single Upshot delivery account enables them to oversee a complete database of participants across the entire county. Logged activities include Duke of Edinburgh Award programmes, Mental Health workshops, one-to-one and group sessions with local schools, holiday programmes, outreach work, youth councils and youth clubs. As the system is available in Welsh, staff members can switch between English and Welsh-language versions according to their needs.

Chris Gledhill, Senior Youth Work Practitioner says:

“Our staff find the Upshot system an extremely important and effective way of monitoring and reporting on our youth work delivery here in the county of Conwy. Staff find the system quick and easy to use in being able to evaluate our engagement work with young people both in schools and the community. Recent training has allowed us to be more confident and efficient in using the system. Being able to link outcomes to Conwy’s corporate plan, enables us to ensure we are working towards our aim to provide a quality service to young people within Conwy county.”

Holiday activities, youth work and parks services – Blackpool Council

Upshot is well-established amongst the charitable organisations of the Lancashire town of Blackpool, with institutions such as The Boathouse Youth, Blackpool Boys and Girls Clubs and Blackpool FC Community Trust making great use of the system. Part of this success has been the implementation by Blackpool Council:

Annie Tyas, Public Health Programme Manager, Blackpool Council:

“We have used Upshot to capture, monitor and evidence our Holiday, Activities and Food (HAF) Programme since 2022. To streamline data collection and prevent duplication of work, access was then rolled out to our Providers in 2023. Providers have found that not only do their teams now have an easy to use tool, accessible on their mobiles or laptops to complete attendance registers timeously but they also have access to a wide range of reports and data for their own use too, all safely stored in one place.

 As the reporting on the HAF Programme has changed over time, Upshot have always worked with us to ensure that our data collection has remained in step with changes and the diversity of our programme. We are able to report with confidence and have access to the data needed to ensure we are compliant with Department for Education reporting standards."

The Council has also found Upshot to be the answer to their project management and impact measurement needs across other departments. The Parks Service uses Upshot to count volunteer hours spent on activities like litter picking, gardening and wildlife surveying; the Park Rangers programme teaches young and old about looking after their green spaces, from Forest Schools and Toddler Groups to bird watching; and most recently the Council Youth team have also set up an Upshot account to capture youth voice initiatives and partnership work.

All of these services link back to an overarching Upshot facilitating account. This means the Council can evidence the participant data, attendance figures and outcomes across all departments and external partners in one online platform.

Sport and Physical Activity – London Borough of Hackney

Upshot was born within the Football Foundation, the UK’s largest sports charity. And Hackney Council’s physical activity team were one of the early adopters, first getting their own account in 2016. Since then, all types of sessions have found their way into their reporting from walking programmes and health and fitness sessions, to London Youth Games delivery, Youth Sport Development (think everything from archery and boccia to volleyball and cricket) and classic football projects. Even Staff Fitness sessions have been duly registered!

Upshot is also used in at least seven other London Borough councils, especially in the areas of public health, sport, physical activity and leisure.

Darren English, Sports & Physical Activity Co-ordinator:

“Upshot supports the Hackney Council Leisure, Parks and Green Spaces team to monitor the performance of our Sport and Physical Activity programmes. It also helps us to manage client data and track the users’ progress. The Upshot system is certainly a useful tool and we look forward to further innovation to assist our programme needs.”

Helping people into employment – Aberdeen City Council

We round off our highlights reel in the North East of Scotland. ABZ Works offers a wide range of employability programmes for Aberdeen residents aged 16 – 67. The service helps those who have just left school, the long-term unemployed or even those with years of experience who have been made redundant. Using Upshot, the team is able to record 1:1 support, take notes as participants move through the programme and ultimately keep track of achieved outcomes such as progressing into training, further education or employment. Attendance at training and workshops is easily entered and qualifications or accreditations that a participant completes can be directly added to their profile on the database.

Aberdeen Council has had an Upshot licence since 2017 and we love also working with other great organisations in the area such as Aberdeen Foyer, helping people into independent living, learning and work, and Station House Media Unit (known as SHMU), using media production to support communities across North East Scotland.

We are proud that our solutions can help local government make their community programmes more effective.

If you work with or for a local authority looking to manage, monitor and evidence your work and impact click HERE for a chat and/or demo of the system and our services from one of our dedicated team.