This year’s winner of Microsoft’s DesignIT award will help to tackle the problems that young homeless people face in finding work and accommodation.

St Basils is a local community organisation dedicated to preventing homelessness among young people in the West Midlands.

As well as running 22 accommodation centres, it offers family remediation, education, training, resettlement and support for young people in their own homes once they have found a place to live.

Five years ago, the organisation was adopted as a corporate charity by BMG Research, a Birmingham-based branch of the Association for Qualitative Research (AQR) that specialises in consulting with local communities, individuals, customers and employers.

BMG analyst and St Basils fundraiser James Elliott was moved to design a virtual rucksack ­ – a secure, online system for homeless people to store important personal details, such as national insurance numbers and past housing and medical history.

“Young homeless people face real difficulty in keeping their entire life in one bag because that bag can often vanish. So we wanted to create a safe system where they can store all that important information and access it any time they need it,” says Elliott.

Transferred knowledge

BMG had been using a similar system to the virtual rucksack in-house for some time, and Elliot believed the tool could be adapted for use elsewhere. It is based on Microsoft SharePoint and SQL Server technologies, providing users with access to stored details from any PC using their login name and password.

“The virtual rucksack is closer to a Hotmail account ­ – the account holder uses a password to get in and can add whatever details they want. If they are severely mentally ill, then a carer may have permission to access the rucksack on their behalf,” says Steve Rainbow, chief fundraiser at St Basils.

“We find the 16- to 25-year-olds we work with to be very web savvy and St Basils has PCs in all of its accommodation units.”

At the initial point of contact, the virtual rucksack will put users’ information online for them and link into all the services through which they can obtain employment and housing advice.

Internet access is provided through 50 PCs at St Basils, while Birmingham City Council provides open access computers across the city as well.

The information will reside on a server, but which organisation provides that technology has yet to be decided.

“As a charity department with an annual budget of just £500,000, we do not have much money available, and need to find a partner to provide and maintain the server and work with Microsoft to get this going,” says Rainbow.

Enhanced record-keeping

Another benefit is that the virtual rucksack helps St Basils keep a record of the young people in its care.

The information is shared with other support agencies, helping them to stay in touch, keep track of their case and make recommendations.

“There are lots of different channels that young homeless people need to go through to help them get back on their feet. We can centralise those in one system, which also gives the support agencies and St Basils the same information in one place,” says Elliott.

“The system integrates with the databases those organisations already run, and allows them to see information from other sources as well, giving them another channel of communication with the people they are helping.”

Better integration

Support services also find it difficult to integrate and co-ordinate the delivery of services to homeless people. “We recognise that different people have different abilities and some will want a feature-rich environment to look for housing and work, and others may not,” says Elliott.

Elliott, who has since left the country for a new job in New Zealand, says he is absolutely thrilled to have won the competition, not least because the £15,000 prize money ­ – and Microsoft design and development assistance ­ – will help St Basils deliver the project.

“I’m most excited for the charity as the prize is based towards them,” he says. “It gives St Basils a great opportunity to extend the services it provides and to do something that is really targeted towards its audience.

“It would not really have had the funds or expertise in-house to deliver this otherwise. It is just nice to be able to make that big difference.”

There is no strict timeline for the project’s completion and all parties are keen to get things right. The project that won last year’s DesignIT prize is still in the development phase, and the winning 2006 DesignIT project has only just been fully implemented.

“Microsoft seems more concerned about quality rather than churning it out,” says Rainbow.

“We have a clear idea of how it will be constructed and will be guiding the project, but Microsoft clearly knows what needs to be done as far as the specifications are concerned.”

The aim is to implement an initial pilot scheme that will provide the virtual rucksack to 20 young homeless people registered with St Basils and then monitor use over a 12-month period.

“Once we get the virtual rucksack embedded, the idea is to roll it out to other homeless charities across the UK and provide a model for best practice,” says Elliott.

Elliott has previously taken part in a number of fundraising activities, including a sponsored bike ride from Birmingham to London.

For more information, visit the DesignIT 2008 finalists’ gallery at www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/designit2008