SPAN

Who is Single Parent Action Network (SPAN)?
How does SPAN use ICT?
What difference has ICT made to SPAN?
What was learnt?
Want to find out more?

Who is Single Parent Action Network (SPAN)?

SPAN is an umbrella organisation representing the diversity of one-parent families across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

SPAN gives a voice to one-parent families living in poverty and isolation and supports the setting up, development and the training of single parent self-help groups.

SPAN works with organisations and decision-making bodies in the UK and Europe to improve policies that affect one-parent families.

How does SPAN use ICT?

SPAN run numerous projects and work in partnership with a number of agencies; staff therefore wanted an ICT system to help incorporate all their projects onto a central database. The development of an improved ICT system meant that staff at SPAN would be able to better share information on their contacts and provide on-going dialogue to their partnership groups.

In particular, SPAN also wanted a system they could monitor and retrieve information on their events and course bookings, tracking students’ progress and to hold more information on non-member organisations.
 
The team made a visit to another organisation to see how their database had benefited them. Once SPAN had secured their funding, staff were then asked to make a list of ICT requirements, ensuring that all staff were consulted.

The team thought the design process was lengthy, but also felt it was beneficial to engage all staff into thinking about what they needed to record and monitor.

SPAN’s new database was up and running but many amendments were made to the earlier versions of the database design in the initial stages.   Staff spent a huge amount of time checking that all the required data was included and that all the functions worked.

SPAN have also created a database manual for all staff and continuously provided staff with further training on the database system.

What difference has ICT made to SPAN?

The development of the database has enabled staff working on different projects, to effectively record any dialogue with partnership groups.

The database has improved communication within SPAN by reducing the level of duplication or confusion with groups staff work with.

Improved information kept on organisations – staff can offer better support to one-parent families (previously only info on SPAN members available).

More effective and professional service – staff can search and provide more targeted information to single parents seeking support.

Information is more accurate – staff feel more confident in passing it on.

Improved monitoring information for funding/reporting and better knowledge of SPAN’s contacts.

More efficient ways of working – staff can now print course registers, send confirmation and welcome letters, and email information, mail merge from within database.

More security of information – can now easily prevent distribution of agency’s details when requested and control permission to edit data.

What was learnt?

Staff at SPAN felt the database was quite complex and that a simpler, user-friendly solution may have been better for them, given that most of their staff needed to enter as well as retrieve data.  At that time, the team were seeking an ‘all-singing, all-dancing’ version, which inevitably made it more difficult for some team members to learn, especially for those not using it on a daily basis. 

SPAN’s previous membership database used was also in Microsoft Access, so the team had some familiarity with it but felt they should have explored other software options.

The team also felt the timing could have been better; SPAN had project funding issues which ended during the database implementation and the new work started after the initial design stage, which meant additional changes and costs.

The planning and design stage is crucial; time is needed to think through the implications of different options. The team felt it was essential to get ‘all staff on board’ as there were discrepancies about different sections of the database.

The team felt the whole process had been quite time consuming, time had to be allocated to consult and advise staff, check each trial version and liaise with the consultant.

Staff had no specific administrative support allocated to the database and relied on volunteers to help with the cleansing/updating process.

Want to find out more?

Contact name: Chris Gaine

Email: info@spanuk.org.uk
Telephone: 0117 9514 231

If you would like more information about the topics covered in this article, view the database section of the Knowledgebase.