Using a simulation-powered digital twin to improve resource planning and help keep more children safe
- Industry
- Not-for-profit
- Location
- London, UK
- Goals
- Leverage a simulation-powered digital twin to ensure helpline staff are optimally positioned to support child welfare concerns.
Achievements with Simul8
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Optimized resource planning for fast, accurate, and confident evidence-based decisions
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Enabled scenario planning to test resourcing options and prepare for major events
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Established a clear pathway to extend the technology to other helplines, including Childline
About the project
The NSPCC, a leading charity dedicated to preventing child abuse and supporting affected children, sought to improve its resource planning for the national helpline. Faced with increasing demand and operational complexities, the charity partnered with the Operational Research (OR) Society, AtkinsRéalis, and Simul8 to implement a simulation-powered digital twin.
This project aimed to ensure helpline staff could efficiently respond to adults and professionals raising concerns about children, improving response times and decision-making across the organization.
Objective: Implement a simulation-powered digital twin to optimize helpline resource planning and improve response times for child welfare concerns.
Here's how they did it
How did they do it?
Senior leaders at the NSPCC reached out to the Operational Research (OR) Society for support with a project to optimize resource planning. They had one goal – to ensure that ‘helpline staff were in the right place at the right time to listen, advise and support the adults that contact them with concerns about a child’, as per the charity’s promise.
Working with Simul8 and volunteers from the OR Society and AtkinsRéalis – a world-leading design, engineering and project management organization – the NSPCC would use a simulation-powered digital twin to redefine its resource planning processes and optimize its responses to calls and online contacts.
By optimizing operational resource planning, the project focused on enabling frontline staff to respond to members of the public or professionals contacting the charity with concerns about a young person’s welfare. They needed a tool that could be used routinely and could future-proof operations. This would enable the charity to make an even bigger impact.
"To have the opportunity to apply the skills I use daily to a project for social good was something I was keen to be involved in. The NSPCC is an incredible charity and the work it does is vital. That inspired us to go the extra mile and deliver a solution that exceeded its expectations."
Senior Consultant at AtkinsRéalis, OR Society member and project volunteer
The challenge
The NSPCC works to prevent child abuse and neglect across the UK and Channel Islands. It helps children who’ve been abused to rebuild their lives, protects children at risk and finds the best ways of preventing child abuse from ever happening.
In support of delivering on its mission, the NSPCC has two flagship national helplines:
Childline (for children and young people to talk about anything)
- On average, a child contacts Childline every 45 seconds. This essential service provides almost 200,000 counseling sessions a year through the support of 1,100 dedicated volunteers and around 300 staff.
- Since Childline started in 1986, it has delivered over six million counseling sessions.
The NSPCC Helpline (for adults with concerns about children and young people)
- The NSPCC Helpline responds to around 75,000 contacts a year from professionals and members of the public concerned about a child or young person’s welfare. It manages this delivery through a workforce of around 150 child protection specialists.
- On average, over 200 worried adults a day contact the NSPCC Helpline about children who desperately need help to protect them.
The NSPCC Helpline was prioritized for phase one of this process excellence project. The charity was experiencing several challenges that it was seeking to overcome, including:
- Existing methods for resource planning and forecasting were too time consuming.
- Using workforce planning software that struggled to account for the nuances of these specialist helplines and the ways they needed to work.
- Being unable to run accurate ‘what if’ scenarios to assess the best way of allocating resources to be there for those that needed them most.
The charity realized that it could use existing data to improve operational planning and reduce response times, as well as to ensure calls and emails were prioritized at the first point of contact. However, beyond simple forecasting based on past data, the NSPCC needed a solution that could enable experimentation to account for the huge variability of day-to-day requirements. It also targeted best practice that could deliver continuous improvement. Senior leaders wanted a solution that could help them make effective business decisions about resource planning based on evidence.
"It takes so much courage to reach out to talk about what’s going on for you or for someone you’re concerned about. Whether you’re a child or young person reaching out to Childline, or a member of the public or professional speaking to our NSPCC Helpline, it’s our responsibility to make sure that whenever you take that important first step, we’re right there with you to listen, to support and to help. One contact can be life changing, and this is why we place so much importance on making sure we’ve got people in the right place at the right time to be there when we’re needed most."
Strategic Service Manager, NSPCC
The method
A simulation-powered digital twin was the ideal solution for the NSPCC’s needs. Why? Because simulation provides an experimentation platform to conduct ‘what-if’ analysis and deliver continuous improvement to achieve organizational objectives. A real-time digital twin also enables the charity to manage operational performance and flows, meaning processes are designed to meet specific needs and are responsive to changing conditions.
The charity started by educating the team on how the adult helpline operated, sharing data sets to ensure all permutations would be considered in the simulation. It worked with OR Society volunteers to develop a proof of concept, then took an Agile approach to building and implementing the simulation-powered digital twin.
The twin enabled the NSPCC to forecast resource needs for worldwide events or different scenarios that might lead to a spike in demand in the coming days, months or years. Historical data from a previous campaign or point in time can be fed into the twin before hundreds of simulations run within minutes. This means planners can respond quickly to live changes and prepare for all eventualities.
This data helps senior management plan and allocate optimal staff to cope with busy periods. Importantly, the simulation-powered digital twin was highly effective in replicating the complexities of a national helpline in a way that was simple for non-technical people to understand and use.
"We weren’t trying to solve a one-off problem in time. The project aimed to develop a lasting solution that could continually adapt to meet demand. By using the simulation-powered digital twin, we were able to have full sight not only of the challenges as things changed, but the solutions."
Strategic Service Manager, NSPCC
The results
Using Simul8’s simulation-powered digital twin technology, the charity optimized its processes to meet the increasing demands for its services. By the end of the project, it benefited from:
- A faster, more accurate and more effective way to resource plan. This tool freed up management time allowing them to make confident, evidence-based decisions about resourcing more quickly.
- The ability to ask ‘what if’ – easy to use scenario builders that understood the operational intricacies of the NSPCC Helpline and allowed them to plan for the impact of major events or test out different resourcing options.
- A pathway to applying the same technology to its other vital helpline services, including Childline.
Next steps for NSPCC
Following the completion of the project, the NSPCC’s Helplines Operational Support Team and Data Analytics team will assume day-to-day control of the simulation-powered digital twin. Members of the OR Society spent time training them on how to use the technology so it can add value now and in the future.
The NSPCC is now looking to phase two, which would enable this same technology to be applied to its Childline service.
"This process has helped us recognize the potential of simulation-powered digital twins and the positive impact they can have on our organization. The technology enables us to plan and allocate resources more quickly, more accurately and more effectively. We can now make confident decisions on how best to manage our resources, allowing our dedicated staff and volunteers to focus on supporting as many children, young people and the adults concerned about them as possible."
Strategic Service Manager, NSPCC
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