Gibside SEN School

Project Objectives

We were approached by Gateshead Council to solve various problems at the reception of one of their key facilities – Gibside School. Gibside’s management team wanted to provide a better level of service to all stakeholders without increasing their running costs.

About Gibside School

Gibside is a Special Educational Needs school that caters for children aged 11-12 with diverse learning needs. There are over 100 staff members at Gibside – each playing a pivotal role in the care and
development of the pupils – and external support staff are brought in to provide specialist services, such as physiotherapy and health counselling.

Challenges

At reception, Gibside had 6 sign-in books at the front desk.This was inconvenient and messy – and each book had its own set of
safeguarding rules attached. Paperwork would pile-up with every visitor
interaction, due to stringent security and H&S policies being required. It was a long-winded process to securely register external staff, contractors and governors every time they visited.

Main Project Targets

1. Remove sign-in books from reception
2. Less paper-based record keeping
3. More time for staff to handle other duties
4. Better data collected about visitors
5. Improvement to safeguarding standards
6. Create a saving on admin resources

Project Highlights

• Sign-in terminal to manage all staff, visitors, contractors and deliveries coming to the school.
• More comprehensive vetting process and specific school policies for all visitors and contractors.
• Fully self-service - so no intervention from reception and admin teams is required.
• Complete register of everyone in or out of the building, with a mobile-friendly emergency roll-call list.
• Less time spent handling visitors and contractors, with no costs on paperwork or managing timesheets and reports.

Results

Gibside School is now able to provide a better level of service to stakeholders, while heightening their security & safeguarding process. The resources being saved just at reception will equate to a substantial return on investment –with VisiPoint expected to pay for itself within the first year!

After a personal demonstration and no-obligation free trial, Gibside School were convinced VisiPoint would solve their problems at reception.

With VisiPoint now fully installed and operational 24/7, the school is safe in the knowledge that every visitor, contractor and delivery is accounted for, while pupils and staff are adequately safeguarded.

Customer Comments

“It has helped us reduce paperwork and streamline the process at reception. Staff have more time to deal with internal requests and visitors like the touch screen system. Safeguarding has also been improved and the printed badges are a nice feature.”