OLM Group, the UK’s largest independent supplier of software solutions for Children’s and Adult Services, today announced the acquisition of Esprit, a leading provider of multi-agency information sharing solutions to Local Authorities and the NHS.

Based in Derby, Esprit specialises in the development and delivery of ‘joined-up’ multi-agency assessment, information management and care planning solutions for Adult Social Care, Children’s Services and the NHS. Its ShareCare:Adult and ShareCare:Child products enable professionals from a diverse range of agencies to collaborate and share information in an appropriate and secure manner. Its public facing ShareCare:Direct package provides a comprehensive, interactive portal for supporting service users in understanding their own needs and shaping their own care.

Peter O’ Hara, CEO OLM Group commented: “With its ten-year track record of project innovation in health and social care, Esprit has an excellent reputation for delivering good quality, well architected enterprise solutions that help people work together and work smarter across organisational and team boundaries. This acquisition not only enables us to widen and strengthen our existing portfolio, particularly in the areas of SEN and CAF where Esprit is already an established player, but also helps us build on our existing strength in Local Government. We look forward to working with the existing management team to leverage several exciting opportunities in health and local government, particularly at a time when information sharing is at the forefront of the public sector IT agenda.”

Richard Wellings, MD of Esprit commented: “Having already worked very successfully with OLM on several integration projects, we feel this move is a great fit for us. OLM is an established and well recognised brand with a long heritage of meeting the needs of Local Government. The combination of our product offerings and development capabilities creates an excellent platform from which we can respond effectively to the profound changes currently taking place across the public sector.”

For more information please contact Esprit on 01332 412200 or info@esprit-is.com

The Gold Challenge is great for teams or those individuals who want to push themselves ahead of the Olympics this summer and raise money for 125 charities across the UK. There are three possible levels including 2012km, 201.2km and 20.12km. More details on how to take part can be found here http://www.goldchallenge.org/2012kmchallenge.

In passing the 500km mark, the Esprit team are doing fantastically well and are on course to smash the 2012km target!

For up to date progress please take a look at: http://www.goldchallenge.org/gc/team/Esprit/league.

For those wishing to donate, more information on Esprit’s chosen charity (and ways to donate) can be found at: http://www.justgiving.com/ManjitTomlinGoldChallenge.

All donations are going towards supporting a great cause.

Lets keep pushing and get past the 1000km marker!

Esprit are pleased to announce that on Monday 5th March, ShareCare: Child version 4.0 was successfully released.

Several areas of ShareCare: Child have been updated and adapted particularly around Special Educational Needs (SEN), which now provides the SEN team with the ability to generate standard letters as part of their SEN process. ShareCare: Child automatically creates the correct letter for the correct person as the user undertakes the process. The system incorporates 25 standard letters with the ability to generate ad hoc letters as required.

Additional functionality also allows for statutory returns for SEN cases and a full SEN case journal.

For a comprehensive description of the ShareCare: Child version 4.0 product please contact us on:

Telephone:       01332 412200

Email:              info@esprit-is.com

Thank you to the Esprit upgrade team for all their hard-work to ensure that the upgrade was rapidly implemented and a great success.

Esprit are delighted to announce that on Friday 27th January, ShareCare: Direct was upgraded successfully from version 0.5 to version 1.0 in the East Cheshire Common Assessment Framework for Adults (CAF) Partnership area.

The upgrade has allowed the East Cheshire Common Assessment Framework for Adults (CAF) Partnership to offer a wide range of new functionally and features throughout ShareCare: Direct.

Several areas of ShareCare: Direct have been updated and adapted particularly in the ‘My Choice’ area, which allows users to submit self-assessments and make an enquiry direct to the council social care department. Version 1.0 will give users the ability to ‘access’ their social care records in real time and provide full delegated access to other trusted individuals to act on the users behalf throughout the site – a first in a local authority in England.

For a comprehensive description of the ShareCare: Direct product please contact us on:

Telephone: 01332 412200

Email:         info@esprit-is.com

Thank you to the Esprit upgrade team for all their hard-work to ensure that the upgrade was rapidly implemented and a great success.

Over the course of the last year Esprit staff have raised £535 for the ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ Foundation as part of Esprit’s ’10 years of Innovation’ celebrations.

‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ aim to make magical memories for children with life threatening diseases and their family to remember for a lifetime.

The presentation was made by Ben Mutton to corporate fundraiser for the East Midlands Sarah Madden on the 18th January.

Esprit would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has donated over the course of the last year, every pound really does make a difference to this fantastic cause.

If you would like to know more about When You Wish upon a Star please visit : http://www.whenyouwishuponastar.org.uk/

Following on from the Connecting for Health accreditation in December 2011, Esprit are pleased to announce that in partnership with Cheshire East Council and IBM, the ShareCare system went live with full NHS Personal Demographic Service (PDS) integration on the 3rd January 2012.

Esprit are pleased to announce that ShareCare has become the first social care application to achieve accreditation for integration with the NHS Personal Demographic Service (PDS).

In order to ensure that systems work correctly and safely with the NHS Care Records Service, NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CfH) operate a robust assurance regime known as the ‘Common Assurance Process’ – or CAP.

The sign off for this process known as DevMac (Development Milestone Achievement) was achieved by Esprit on the 5th December 2011.

Esprit is pleased to announce the availability of the ShareCare: Direct Information Gateway.

ShareCare: Direct  has been specifically designed to support the personalisation of Adult Social Care by:

• Enabling citizens to easily locate up to date information and advice;
• Empowering them to make independent decisions and choices about their own care needs
• Supporting them in managing their own care provision.

• Flexible information and advice hierarchy  – delivering targeted, easy to maintain advice and assistance information;
• Comprehensive and extensible resource directory – supporting a local marketplace of service providers and services, with self submission and information management;
• Local ‘MyCare’ environment – enabling  users to access their own assessments, support plans, demographics and other personal data securely;
• Self assessment support – providing  a range of easy to construct, on screen feedback, calculation and data capture services;
• Interactive communication – with service user ratings and comments; social networking integration (Facebook, Twitter etc), forums and consultations.
• Service integration  – supporting interactive discussion between service users and professionals and on demand data exchange with case management and other systems
• Secure access – enabling secure access to a users own assessments

ShareCare: Direct are currently working with the Cheshire East Council Partnership.

For more information on ShareCare: Direct or to register for a free demonstration please:

Call:  01332 412200

Email: info@esprit-is.com

Esprit realise that for most local authorities managing Special Educational Needs (SEN) assessments and reviews and maintaining an efficient service, is a time consuming and costly process.

ShareCare: SEN has been specifically designed to mitigate these issues. It is an easy to use, wholly web based solution, supporting comprehensive SEN case management functionality, while additionally delivering time and cost savings through a low cost software model.

ShareCare: SEN is available 24/7/365. It can be securely accessed over the Internet from any location e.g. office, home or school environment, and is specifically designed to support the full SEN business process: Referral, Assessment, Statement of Special Educational Need, Provision and subsequent monitoring through regular Progress Reviews and Management Reporting.

The SEN solution can support students at any age, or level of special educational need and can integrate with other elements of the ShareCare: Child product suite – e.g. e-CAF, ICS and Concern Tracking.

To request more information or to arrange a product demonstration at your convenience please contact:

01332 412200 or please click here

Between March 21^st and April 8th 2011 staff from Esprit and Connecting for Health (CfH) will be carrying out Witness Testing of ShareCare’s integration with the PDS at our Derby offices. The Witness Test is a key stage in the CfH Common Assurance Process acting as a gateway into User Acceptance Testing and live deployment.

Esprit’s partner in the SCPEA process is East Cheshire Council where a full go live of the PDS enabled release of ShareCare is planned for Summer 2011.