Time to Spare's referral networks allow multiple organisations to work collaboratively to provide support to people.

The way it works is pretty simple:

In the process, we provide all the organisations in the network (and commissioners) with tools to get an overview of the capacity and coverage of the network - allowing you to uncover cold-spots in the delivery of services.

Each organisation can create their own account and can add and update their information themselves. When someone is logged into their account, they can navigate their way to the referral network page by opening up the "Networks" section of the left-hand sidebar:

You need to go to the "Your Services" tab on this page to add new services or update existing ones:

Clicking on any of the existing services or on the "New Service" button will open up a form with 5 sections:

Shown here:

On the first page, organisations can add the name of their activity (either choosing from an existing tag they've saved to their Time to Spare, or creating a new one). They can also add the category of support available. The categories shown will be the same as you discussed with us when the network was created. These categories can either be laid out in a simple list, or as a structured hierarchy of options:

The final 2 options are about where the service takes place and whether the service has a catchment area.

Selecting a venue for the service will open a popup asking for more details about the location:

Organisations can also choose to set a catchment area for their activities. Clicking the "Open Map to Add" button will open up the ability to draw a specific catchment area on a map directly:

The next screen lets organisations create a timetable of their opening days and hours. You do this by clicking on the days you're open (they will then appear selected and blue). Underneath the days, you'll get the option to add the specific hours of day the service is available.

The next page is related to the "Capacity" of the service. This capacity number influences the algorithm that suggests an organisation to provide support:

This means referrals will be spread around organisations in the network and won't easily overwhelm a particular organisation. An organisation can also completely stop the flow of referrals by updating this value to 0 at any time.

The next screen is important if you have chosen to use Time to Spare to host a public-facing map/directory of services. If organisations wish to be listed on this public-facing map, this provides extra information that is relevant to members of the public (e.g. contact details and other available referral pathways). Organisations can also add a description and choose an image representing their service (one of their own photos or an image from a stock photo gallery):

Finally, the "Restrictions" section allows organisations to define which demographic groups they support. For example, an older people's charity may want to limit the support they offer to individuals over the age of 60. Alternatively, a women's group would not want to show up as a suggestion for men in need of support. This page can be customised to include specific relevant demographics in the initial setup.

If there are no demographic restrictions on the people that support is offered to, this section should just be left blank.

By clicking on the "All Organisations" tab at the top of the referral network page, you can navigate to the section showing a summary of all the organisations and services that have been added to the network. This is also the section where you can invite new organisations to join the network.

There are 4 different views:

The list view is the default and is fairly self-explanatory.

The map view gives you the ability to look at the geographic coverage of the services offered by all the organisations in the network. You can drill-down into particular categories of services by using the "Service Categories" drop down.

The map will then show the catchment areas that the different organisations drew for the area they can support, projected on top of the Local Authority boundary (shown in the map above is the London Borough of Camden in grey). As more organisations join the network, this can get a bit overwhelming, so there are a couple of tools built in to make it clearer.

Firstly, if you hover over the name of the organisation above the map, it will highlight all the areas provided by that organisation. You can also use the small button in the top right of the map to change the catchment areas into arbitrarily sized circles radiating from the specific venue where the service is provided:

The "Capacity" page allows you to view at a glance the total capacity of all the services listed in the network. The area of the box represents the total capacity of the service. The coloured-in part shows the currently open referrals as a fraction of that total capacity. Essentially, if the page is mostly white, most of the organisations are still able to support new people. Alternatively, if the page is mostly coloured in, it's likely organisations are struggling with the number of people they are currently supporting.

Just like the "Map" page, you can view this for each category using the dropdown.

On the "Calendar" section, you can see which days different services are open at a glance.

If you want to create your own visualisations of these services, we also have a REST API. If you email us or use our live chat support, we can give you the credentials to grant access to this.

Once a network is created, you can start sending referrals to it. You can do this in a number of ways:

The form itself collects contact details of the person needing support as well as demographic information.

When a postcode is entered, it shows the location of that postcode and can also offer a warning prompt if that postcode is outside a chosen Local Authority.

The next section is where you can add the source of the referral (e.g. the name of the individual or organisation making the referral). You can also add information about the number of people in the household that need support. This clearly is particularly relevant for food support referrals as it affects the amount of food an organisation needs to provide.

On the example below, you can see there are actually 2 referral networks. It is possible to connect 2 different networks in this way, which means you the same form can be used to create a referral to 2 different groups of organisations (e.g. one for legal advice and one for emergency food support).

The final section of the form is the one that usually needs the most configuration. This section of the form allows you create a set of questions that help provide information to organisations responding to the referral and also help the suggestion algorithm to select the most appropriate organisation to provide support. These questions can be structured so that they follow a logical flow-chart-like process, so that only the relevant questions given previous answers show up.

There is also an option to add free-text details about the referral. There is a soft warning if this box doesn't contain more than 100 characters. It is possible to send the referral with a shorter response, but in our experience this causes difficulties as the receiving organisation is unlikely to have enough detail to respond quickly and effectively.

Once these form sections have been filled in, the page will suggest the most relevant organisations for the referral. This means that staff or organisations without full knowledge of the whole ecosystem of service provision in an area can nonetheless get a sensible suggestion for the best support available.

However, these suggestions can be overridden. If the person filling out the referral form disagrees with the suggestions for whatever reason, each suggestion can be removed.

Once you are happy with the suggested referral destinations, and the person in need of support has given their consent (as specified by the customisable consent disclaimer text and tick box), the referral can be sent. If the person needing support does not consent to share their information directly, the person making the referral can simply give the details of the suggested partner as show in the list.

Once the referral is sent, you will be presented with a page that shows a link to the referral with a referral ID. Only people with permission to access the network (e.g. the organisations you invited previously) will be able to view the details on this link. If you need to, you can copy this referral ID into other case management/CRM systems you use - it provides a quick way to access the status of this referral in future.

When a referral is created, an email notification is sent both to the email address entered on the form (to notify them that someone has referred them for support) and to the organisation at the top of the suggestion list. This email will have some details about the referral, but the organisation will need to click on the link in the email (and then log in) in order to view the full referral details.

This particular referral will then show up on the left of the "Referrals" tab:

This "Viewing" section shows the full details of the referral, the categories of support needed, and any relevant contact details. If the organisation viewing the referral is also the organisation the referral has been assigned to, there will be further options when you scroll down the page:

In this section, the organisation can see the location of the referral on a map. They can also leave a note on the referral (to indicate any problems with supporting the person, or anything else they think would be useful to a coordinator or to other organisations).

There are also 3 response buttons, with 3 different meanings:

If a referral is rejected, an email notification is sent to the next organisation on the list of suggestions. If there are no more organisations on the list, a notification is sent to the coordinating organisation (e.g. the Local Authority team).

If no action has been taken within 2 days, an email reminder is sent.

Once the referral is accepted, these buttons will no longer show up, and instead the organisation will see different actions:

The first section "View details" allows the organisation to either download the referral details into a CSV file (e.g. if they want to upload this person to their own case management system). There is also a "View" button. This takes the organisation to the individual's page on Time to Spare's built-in light-touch Case Management System. This person will also be automatically tagged with the name of the project they were referred to - allowing the organisation to use all the tools available on our tag pages.

The second section has 2 options:

Clicking either of these buttons will close this case for the organisation and add back to their "Capacity" to accept new referrals.

For other organisations in the network that were not suggested for this referral, they will be able to see some, but not all, of the referral details. This is often useful in the event that the organisation is already working with this individual - they may choose to give some additional context.

On the right side of the "Referrals" page, you can see the full list of referrals in the network.

You can scroll through this list to find the status of any existing referral. Clicking "View" or clicking anywhere on the referral will change what's visible on the "Viewing" section on the left.

This list can also be filtered by using the filter options in the top left:

You can search for referrals based on their:

An organisation receiving referrals can also jump straight to "Their Referrals" by clicking on the "Your Referrals" tab at the top of the list.

If you have set up a question to indicate "Urgency" (e.g. if someone has an imminent eviction procedure, or is in need of emergency food support), some referrals may show up as "Urgent". You can view all of these by clicking the button above the list: