News and Press - 2008

September - Camden WNF goes live

Following on from the successful launch of the Camden Working NEO, Camden Council decided to use NEO to support their Working Neighbourhoods Fund project. As part of running the two projects within the borough, clients of both projects will be able to access support that is available through both these projects, thereby creating a joined-up solution in provision for assisting those who most need it.

August - Welfare to Work Success

The Welfare to Work conference proved a great success with a knockout attendance. The Meganexus stand proved very popular with our latest NEO system crossing both the needs for Flexible New Deal and working well in conjunction with the LSC's aims to integrate skills with employment. The convention focus:

‘Opportunity’ because the welfare reform debate of the past years is now about delivery not debate.

‘Challenge’ because unemployment is forecast to increase and delivering results will get tougher.

The proceedings opened with Rt Hon James Purnell MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the closing plenary of day one will commenced with Alan Cave, Delivery Director, Welfare to Work Equality Group, Department of Work and Pensions & Chris Humphries, Chief Executive,UK Commission for Employment and Skills Lesley Strathie, Chief Executive, Jobcentre Plus & Chris Banks CBE, Chair, Learning & Skills Council opened the second day with James Clappison MP, Shadow Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform addressed the Convention to present the Conservative Party’s views on Welfare Reform. At the end of the Convention David Freud, Secretary of State’s External Adviser on Welfare, Department for Work and Pensions closed. Dave Simmonds OBE,Chief Executive of Inclusion chaired all of the plenary sessions at the Convention.

July 2008 - SLHP online goes LIVE

Consisting of all the PCTs in South London, and established across 9 boroughs in South London, the South London HIV Partnership’s mission is to offer a new cohesive service delivery model using a new central service coordination team. This partnership’ innovative delivery model is based around a central Service Coordination centre who facilitate client signposting and referral to existing delivery partners through better identification of client needs. To manage consistent quality of delivery the partnership also had a requirement for full, anonomised, reporting and client feedback collection.

MegaNexus have provided a technology based solution supporting the needs of the Partnership. Our core skill of delivering online case management systems enabled us to present the best proposal to support the SLHP approach to the service delivery. The key element of the requirement involved providing both a semi automatic ‘smart’ sign posting system via cross partner referral management and progress monitoring system. With the main requirement to assess the quality of the delivered service and therefore to enhance the swift identification of client needs and therefore the successful delivery of the correct interventions.

Key innovative system features includes:

Needs analysis assessment.
Smart referrals based on identified needs.
Real time Notifications and alerts.
Mediated Peer to peer networking .
Flexible questionnaire building and distributing to filtered groups.
Enhanced Security.

June 2008 - C-OOL covered by the BBC

Youths get £40 of fun money

A new scheme in Tower Hamlets and Camden, called 'Choice and Opportunities On-Line' or COO-L will give 2,000 young people in the borough £40 a month for a year to pay for leisure and sporting activities, including boxing, drama classes and rock climbing.

The scheme is being paid for using a £1.4m government grant. It is only available to 12 to17 year-olds who are eligible for free school meals, have special educational needs or are in care.

Young people can go to the Meganexus developed COO-L website and book activities ranging from rock climbing to drama classes. Approved activity providers can add activities, manage their young persons' booking and invoice through the system.

Kevin Collins, the council's director of Children's Services said: "This is about giving young people the power to enjoy the things they already love doing or even new things, without having to worry about the costs.

"It has so many benefits and gives young people here a real sense of independence and freedom to use their spare time how they want to."

See it now : www.coo-l.com for both Tower Hamlets & Camden COO-L

Take the money and run?

None of the children involved in the scheme are being given cash. Instead, the my is being delivered through a specific website so that it can only be spent on council youth services.

All young people eligible for the scheme will be able to search the COO-L website for activities that interest them, book them online and attend using a specially designed photo card.

Card holders will also be able to book a place for a friend on their chosen activity.

To see interviews with schoolchildren taking part in the scheme and Steve Sipple, Head of Youth and Community

See comments on YouTube

Green Maniac is a hit

Camden Green Fair played host to a variety of organizations who promote green ethics. Extremely popular on the day were the Green Maniac emblazd t-shirts being given to all who registered for the website. The UrbanBuzz funded project looks to encourage the development of Green Networks with the London community. These communities are built through a shared interest in the environment and our online social networking system.

By socially networking job seekers and green businesses, we enable a wide access to employment opportunities and improve matching the skills needed for the up-and-coming green economy.

This is achieved through the use of the Meganexus web-based social networks designed to extend the area of search made available to job-seekers and those who can provide employment opportunities (including voluntary and charitable work). In addition, we link job-seeker, employer and green networks. Green Maniac aims to increase the search range and diversity of choice made available to those wish to be part of Green Maniac and sign up to our website.

The GreenManiac website helps people find jobs within green businesses. Meganexus take pride in developing relationships between job seekers and businesses, as well as helping out at local events.

The Fair aims to inspire Londrs to help make their capital a world-class Green City, letting visitors find out about the huge and growing number of companies, products, and lifestyle choices that are available to us all, every day.

Why not join in:www.greenmaniac.com

April 2008 - CamdenWorking

MegaNexus is proud to announce its ongoing relationship with the Camden Working Partnership. Camden Working is a partnership between six different providers in the Camden area, with the aim to assist people, from disadvantaged backgrounds, back into the work force. These partners provide various supports, from up-skilling such as CV writing or advice and guidance right through to in-work support.

MegaNexus and Camden Working are very excited about the development to their Website This has delivered a new Management Information System (MIS), allowing partners to be able to synchronise and solidify the partnerships. The MIS system streamlines partner's working processes and elevates benchmarking standards. Partners are able to track and monitor their client's progress from worklessness through to employment being sustained. Making client referrals from one partner to another is now only a click away. The system will also identify potential outcomes and any barriers to worklessness to support management in their daily decision making.

To find out more about this system or other MegaNexus products, please contact Lisa.Welsh@meganexus.com or Tiannii.Tang@meganexus.com or call on 0207 843 4343.

March 2008 - COO-L Choice and Opportunities On-Line

MegaNexus is providing the system for Choice and Opportunities On-line (COO-L). The COO-L system is a fantastic on-line space for Young People to browse, and book fun activities to do in the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets & Camden. Bursaries of £40 per month will be given to 2000 young people in years 9-12 attending a Tower Hamlets or Camden school.

The government Green Paper, 'Youth Matters', sets out a vision for young people accessing a full range of personal development activities, benefiting their future life chances. Whilst many young people already engage in a full range of positive activities, a government survey found in 2004 that about 25% of young people do not participate in any positive activities. This may be due to lack of interest, transport or money.

The main aim of the COO-L scheme, is to increase young people's participation in positive activities by providing a bursary, which can be spend on activities advertised on this website. The local authorities that are taking part in a year-long pilot to see what impact COO-L makes. The DCSF (Department for Children Schools and Families) wants COO-L to test the theory that:

"Placing spending power in the hands of young people, makes them more willing to engage in positive activities."

The full pilot will run from April'08 to March'09. Following this, there will be an evaluation to see what difference COO-L has made to young people and, if there has been an increase in participation in positive activities, the project will be launched nationally. Access the COO-L system now at www.coo-l.com.

February 2008 - UrbanBuzz Building sustainable communities

MegaNexus recently oversaw the updating of the UrbanBuzz website (www.urbanbuzz.org). MegaNexus has incorporated many new features to reflect the emerging needs of the programme and its constituent projects. In particular, the projects’ own web pages will be kept fresh by the projects themselves and so all can expect to see stories and new headlines appearing regularly! The website now offers:

An easily accessible network with over 1,500 registrants interested in UrbanBuzz and the 'sustainable communities’ agenda;
Visualisation of networks and the ability to identify others who have similar interests and with whom contact has not yet been made;
Intuitive design, for ease of use and functional for a variety of browsers;
Up to date information on our projects, events and news;
Forums for discussion on projects;

As part of this update the ESP-sim project commissioned Meganexus to build an online competition voting gallery for its Youcanplan Pattern Books competition, hosted on the UrbanBuzz website. The gallery invites votes from the UrbanBuzz community for five of the best pattern book designs for UK popular and sustainable housing, submitted by architects and designers from both UK and abroad. The competition forms an important part of ESP-sim’s project dissemination and marketing, and the online voting gallery plays a pivotal role in the success of the ESP-sim project.

The following is a quote from Michael Kohn, Architect and Computational Designer for ESP-sim - “We were impressed with Meganexus’s dedication to the design and build of the gallery. The team was unaware of any similar precedent so we had to work through the problem from first principles. Meganexus prepared a detailed brief that was invaluable in shaping the gallery’s overall functionality, and then they worked closely and collaboratively with us to deliver an attractive site, working reiteratively on its final implementation to ensure the final delivered gallery was both informative to the visitor and fair to all competition entrants.”