Schools Financial Support and Oversight (SFSO) caseworkers need to understand how a case is going so they can report to colleagues and stakeholders at case review meetings.

When a case has more than one concern, this can be tricky.

We introduced the new concept of ‘risk to trust’, a new rating system for caseworkers to measure and report on a case’s overall risk.

Why we introduced another risk rating

Each concern in a case has a risk rating that caseworkers assign by referring to the Risk Management Framework (RMF). Users shared that only grading concerns “treats everything in its own little silo”.

Research showed that having more than one concern can mean the risk can “add up to a more serious issue”.

You might have several amber/greens but the number of concerns might make it a red If you've got multiple concerns, you've got to look across the piece as to what the level of confidence [is] in that trust's position. Concerns individually can look manageable, but bringing concerns together lets us know the seriousness and what we need to do

Adding a new risk rating for the whole case means users can reflect the cumulative risk of multiple concerns in a case.

And when a caseworker is managing one concern but believes the case has a different risk level than the RMF-defined concern risk rating, the caseworker can now choose a rating for the case to reflect this.

Meeting user needs

We validated these pain points with user needs for caseworkers and team leaders.

As a caseworker I need to be able to record all of my case information in one place So that I have a single source of truthI need to be able to record all of my case information in one place So that I have a single source of truth

As a team leader I need to be able to see case information in one place So that I have a complete picture of what has happened and why

We added this new risk to trust rating to the main case overview page so users could see it alongside the rest of the case information.

Screenshot of case overview page showing a Red/Amber risk to trust rating which reflects the overall case risk of two Amber/Green-rated concerns

Using a second RAG (red/amber/green) rating

As users were already using a RAG rating scale to rate concerns, the team tested different rating scales with users to find one that would make sense for caseworkers.

However, research found that caseworkers already use other rating scales in other parts of their work, such as grading something from 1 to 5.

“Makes it overly complicated to have two different types of risk rating. [Is this] change for change’s sake?”

As users felt another rating scale would make the process more complicated, the team followed user feedback that it would be “much easier to have a RAG rating” and designed ‘risk to trust’ with the same RAG scale.

Guidance for risk to trust

As ‘risk to trust’ is a new concept for caseworkers, the team expected users to need further guidance.

We shared an explanation on how users should assign a risk to trust in caseworker guidance (a Word document). This guidance was shared with users in unmoderated testing.

Screenshot of Word document showing guidance for caseworkers on risk to trust. Users are advised to assign a RAG (red, amber, green) rating using their judgement to give a quick and clear overview in a single rating. Screenshot of caseworker guidance explaining that risk to trust allows users to give a quick and clear overview of cases with a single rating.

Next steps

We will be researching users’ ability to complete tasks in the system during unmoderated testing. Users will be given the Word document guidance and asked to assign a risk to trust as part of the scenario.

We will review whether users are able to understand and complete the task. We will also be interviewing users after unmoderated testing for further feedback to understand where we can iterate risk to trust in the system and caseworker guidance.

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