Government and Civic · Ordinary People
Helen got her eye contact back. Two directors made sure she could keep it.
Karen Fuller, Sarah Spence, Helen · Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames & Oxfordshire County Council, England, UK
At Kingston and Oxfordshire, two directors chose to give their social workers back the time, and the attention, that paperwork was taking from the people in front of them.
The person and the place
On the frontline at the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, England, is Helen, a senior social worker. The decision that changed her workday came from two directors: Karen Fuller, Director of Adult Social Care at Oxfordshire County Council, and Sarah Spence, Interim Director of Adult Social Care Transformation and Improvement at Kingston.
The problem Karen cared about
Social workers were spending more time on paperwork than on the people they were there to help. Fuller put it plainly: "We were hearing constantly that administrative work was taking longer than direct work, with people feeling torn between being fully present with residents and capturing everything accurately at the same time." For Helen, that meant writing notes during a visit instead of looking at the person she was visiting.
The agency moment
Fuller and Spence each led their councils into adopting Beam's AI note-taking tool, branded Magic Notes at Kingston, choosing it specifically to cut documentation time and free up staff attention. Kingston's rollout was made voluntary by design, something Spence said mattered for real adoption to take hold.
What changed
At Kingston, a pilot cut administrative time by more than half, and freed up to 4 hours a week for some social workers, strong enough results that the tool expanded to 100 more workers. Kingston's own case study for the Local Government Association adds that supervision write-ups fell from 40 minutes to under 10. At Oxfordshire, three quarters of the test group said the tool had done its job, with work that used to take up to eight hours often finished in more like two, and the county has since handed the tool to more than 1,800 staff in children's services, education, and adult social care. For Helen, the change wasn't measured in a percentage. It was measured in attention.
The move worth copying
The move was not buying software. It was deciding what the saved time was for, and then protecting it. Share this with anyone managing people whose paperwork is eating the job they came to do.
"When I am completing an assessment, review or any other interaction with people I support, Magic Notes allows me to maintain eye contact, listen accurately and critically reflect in the moment and it means that I don't have to worry about taking notes." — Helen, Senior Social Worker, Kingston
Sources
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Curated by Good in Progress from the public record.
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