CCCS offers a broad range of support styles.

One off consultancy sessions followed up with a full report of recommendations for consideration. These normally take between one and two man days to complete, reports being with heads of service or those who commissioned the work within five working days.

Individual Projects to analyse current situations, define options and recommend courses of action. Such projects may be very short term and take less than three or four man days or could be longer and spread over several months where work undertaken is reported back regularly. In the former case, a one-off report would be produced. The latter case would lead to several reports and probably include high quality, detailed one-to-one consultancy sessions.

System Implementations in which work is undertaken with all the relevant professionals in the authority to put in place a desired solution. All such implementations commence with specification development (if not already undertaken) to ensure that the client can measure success of the implementation. A project plan would be developed and budgets established to ensure that all parts of the implementation were appropriately managed. Frequently, such implementations include not only service and associated MI staff but also corporate (and sometimes Education) IT colleagues, finance officers and computer audit colleagues. Where web enrolment is to be implemented, a long term project has to be established with all relevant colleagues so that time lines are clearly understood and software developers understand the complications of such implementations within a local authority setting.

Help Line for LEA managers to discuss, in confidence, issues and problems facing them during the stressful times encountered in system implementation.

All consultancy undertaken is to LSN S4S standards. (Peter Davies is an LSN S4S Quality Consultant). Where projects or implementations are over a period of greater than four working days, Terms of Reference, Action Plans, Service Level Agreements or Contracts are drawn up for the work depending upon the need of the client.

All work is covered by full professional indemnity insurance and CCCS is registered as a holder of personal data for client authorities while under contract to them with the Information Commissioner.