Flexible and Remote Working in Adult and Social Care - Find a freedom of information request

1. How many of your employees work with children or vulnerable people (e.g. social workers, or those who work in fostering, education or child and adult care)?

2. How many of your employees who work with children or vulnerable people are ‘remote workers’ or ‘flexible workers’ (i.e. they perform some of their duties away from a fixed/office location – for instance, performing home visits or working from home outside of regular office hours)?

All the below questions relate to those employees who work with children or vulnerable people, and are also considered ‘remote workers’ or ‘flexible workers’ as identified in questions one and two above.

3. Do you provide these employees with any of the below devices so that they can perform their jobs outside of the office (indicate all that are applicable):

a. Basic mobile phone.

b. Smartphone.

c. Tablet.

d. Laptop computer.

e. Desktop computer.

4. Are they able to perform the following tasks on these council-provided devices:

a. Access centrally stored information on the individuals they are dealing with.

b. Save information on their cases or specific individuals to the device.

c. Save information on their cases or specific individuals to central storage that isn’t on the council-provided device (e.g. through a VPN connection).

d. Communicate with colleagues over email.

e. Use collaboration tools (e.g. Microsoft Teams, Slack, WhatsApp).

f. Communicate with the specific children or vulnerable people they are working with (e.g. over email or instant messaging).

g. Communicate with people who work outside the organisation (e.g. contractors or other public services).

h. Personal tasks – e.g. visiting non-work-related websites or accessing personal email accounts.

5. How many of these employees have complained to the organisation that they could not perform work they need to on their council-provided device (e.g. because of issues with the device, difficulty accessing information, or a lack of training) in the past 12 months?

6. Do you prevent these employees from using their own personal devices for work-related tasks due to concerns over data privacy:

a. Yes, we prevent all tasks.

b. Yes, we prevent some tasks.

c. No, but they have to take specific actions – e.g. installing security on their device, using specific vetted applications.

d. No.

e. Don’t know.

7. Are you aware of any of these employees sharing their personal mobile phone number for work purposes when instructed not to? If possible, how many have done so?

1. Lincolnshire County Council has 1583 employees in Children's Services and 738 employees in Adult care.

2. Lincolnshire County Council does not record this data.

3. Lincolnshire County Council provides employees with Smartphones and Tablets, laptops or desktops so that they can perform their jobs outside of the office.

4. Employees can perform the following tasks on these council-provided devices: Access centrally stored information on the individuals they are dealing with; Save information on their cases or specific individuals to the device; Save information on their cases or specific individuals to central storage that isn’t on the council-provided device; Communicate with colleagues over email; Use collaboration tools; Communicate with the specific children or vulnerable people they are working with; Communicate with people who work outside the organisation. Employees may also perform personal tasks such as visiting non-work-related websites or accessing personal email accounts in line with the acceptable user policy.

5. Lincolnshire County Council does not record this data.

6. Lincolnshire County Council prevents all instances of employees using their personal devices for work-related tasks.

7. Lincolnshire County Council does not record this data.