Independent Custody Visitors perform an essential role in helping to safeguard the welfare and rights of detainees. However, many schemes still rely on paper forms or basic tools such as Microsoft Forms to collect visit information.
Although these methods can record answers, they do not provide a complete reporting and management system. Scheme Managers may still need to copy information into spreadsheets, create graphs, compile reports, chase missing returns and manually track whether issues have been resolved.
A dedicated ICV Reporting system can save time, reduce administration and provide much better oversight.
The cost of manual processing
Consider a scheme with four custody suites, each visited once per week.
That produces:
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4 visits per week
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208 visits per year
If each paper or Microsoft Forms report takes approximately 1.5 hours to review and enter into an Excel spreadsheet, plus another 30 minutes to produce the required graphs and reports, that is around two hours of administration per visit.
The annual calculation is:
208 visits × 2 hours = 416 hours
At an estimated staff cost of £20 per hour:
416 hours × £20 = £8,320 per year
That is more than eleven 37.5-hour working weeks spent processing visit reports and producing routine information.
This is also a conservative estimate. It does not include the additional time spent:
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Chasing ICVs for missing reports
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Searching for delayed or lost paper forms
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Correcting incomplete information
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Tracking outstanding detainee issues
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Producing quarterly management reports
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Completing quarterly ICVA reports
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Responding to requests for statistics and historical information
How does that compare with ICV Reporting?
The ICV Reporting system costs less than £20 per custody suite per week.
For four suites, the annual system cost is therefore less than:
4 suites × £20 × 52 weeks = £4,160 per year
If each suite also needs a basic Chromebook costing approximately £100:
4 Chromebooks = £400 one-off
The maximum first-year cost used for this comparison is therefore:
Less than £4,560
Compared with an estimated £8,320 of annual manual administration, that represents a potential first-year saving of more than:
£3,760
From the second year, once the Chromebooks have already been purchased, the potential saving increases to more than:
£4,160 per year
The system could therefore pay for itself while also giving the Scheme Manager back hundreds of hours of working time.
More than a replacement for paper forms
ICV Reporting is not simply another online questionnaire. It is a purpose-built reporting and management system for Independent Custody Visiting schemes.
It provides:
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Immediate access to submitted visit reports
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Scheme-wide and custody-suite dashboards
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Graphical reporting without rebuilding charts in Excel
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Individual detainee and site-check records
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Intelligent question branching
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Exception-based reporting
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Tracking of resolved and unresolved issues
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Scheme Manager review and approval
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Escalation to inspectors where necessary
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Searchable visit and issue histories
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Built-in checks for missing information
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Accessibility options for ICVs
Instead of information being spread across paper forms, Microsoft Forms responses, emails and spreadsheets, the whole reporting process is brought together in one system.
Why Microsoft Forms may not be enough
Microsoft Forms is useful for simple questionnaires, but ICV reporting is more complex.
A scheme may need to manage different questions depending on whether a detainee is available, has accepted a visit, is a child, has particular needs or has raised a welfare concern.
It must also track whether issues were resolved during the visit, followed up by the Scheme Manager or referred to an inspector.
Trying to handle this through form branching, spreadsheets and manual follow-up can quickly become complicated and time-consuming.
Simple pricing and unlimited support
ICV Reporting has:
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No setup fee
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Free unlimited training
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Free unlimited support
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A straightforward annual subscription
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No need for expensive specialist equipment
A basic Chromebook for each custody suite may be all that is needed.
Give Scheme Managers time to manage
Scheme Managers should be supporting ICVs, identifying trends and helping to resolve concerns, not spending weeks every year copying information into spreadsheets and recreating reports.
For a four-suite scheme, moving to ICV Reporting could save more than 200 administrative hours per year, even after allowing for the cost of the system!
To see how the ICV Reporting system could support your scheme, visit:
https://www.realworldprojects.co.uk/reporting-solutions/
Contact Real World Projects Limited to arrange a demonstration.
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