What Peterborough's ASC Team Learned from Deploying an AI Assistant
- 19 minutes ago
- 3 min read
When Peterborough City Council’s Adult Social Care (ASC) team set out to modernise their Technology Enabled Care (TEC) offer, they faced a familiar challenge: growing demand, complex needs and not enough time for staff to keep up with fast-changing products, pathways and guidance. Hey Geraldine, co-developed with Datnexa, to make a personalised AI assistant for TEC based on the expertise of a trusted practitioner, Geraldine Jinks.
Turning one expert into 24/7 support
Before Hey Geraldine, many TEC-related decisions relied on one specialist colleague. Occupational Therapists and social workers often had to phone Geraldine, search multiple documents or rely on memory to work out which devices or digital tools might help. This created bottlenecks, inconsistent practice and lost time that could otherwise have been spent with residents and carers.
Peterborough’s ambition was simple: “every practitioner should have Geraldine in their pocket, any time of day or night.” Over three months, Geraldine and colleague Megan worked with the Datnexa team to capture her knowledge, structure it, and combine it with local policies, pathways and TEC catalogues. The result is Hey Geraldine - a conversational AI assistant that answers natural language questions in Geraldine’s clear, friendly, practical style, grounded strictly in Peterborough’s own content.
Practitioners now ask questions like: “I’m working with someone with early dementia who is up all night - what could help?” or “What’s our process for getting a GPS device approved?” The assistant responds with locally relevant options, key considerations and when to escalate to a specialist, “exactly like asking Geraldine, even down to the device part numbers.”
What changed for Peterborough’s ASC team
The impact has been both measurable and cultural.
Approximately 15 minutes saved per TEC-related conversation, compared with manual searching or phone-based advice.
Over 1,200 questions answered in a six-week trial, releasing more than 300 hours of Occupational Therapy time in that period alone.
100% clearance of the TEC team’s backlog, with more complex cases dealt with faster.
Higher resident satisfaction and better service, with fewer meetings and forms, quicker hospital discharge and people getting “the right thing first time.”
£250k in cost avoidance in year one from a £25k investment, delivering around 900% ROI in year one, rising to over 2,000% over three years.
Staff feedback has been clear: the answers feel like Geraldine’s own advice, and having instant access to that expertise “relieved the pressure” of needing to email TEC colleagues and wait for a response - especially in fast-paced hospital environments. For Geraldine herself, the assistant has freed time to focus on complex cases and service development, rather than fielding routine calls.
How Hey Geraldine works in practice
Peterborough’s Hey Geraldine is accessed via Microsoft Teams, so practitioners can use it at the point of need without switching systems. Under the bonnet, it uses a large language model combined with retrieval-augmented generation - when someone asks a question, the system retrieves the most relevant passages from a curated knowledge base of local TEC catalogues, guidance and pathways, then generates a response strictly grounded in that content.
Four design choices have been critical to safe, trusted use:
Human-centred design. The assistant reflects a real practitioner’s voice and approach, which builds trust and drives adoption.
Local context and control. Each deployment is built around the council’s own TEC offer, policies and thresholds, with content owned and updated by the council.
Clear professional boundaries. The system does not make eligibility decisions, change case records or override professional judgement; it signposts when to seek human oversight.
Insight and improvement. An analytics dashboard shows usage patterns, common queries, estimated time savings and where guidance needs updating, turning everyday questions into actionable service insight.
Recognition beyond Peterborough
The approach has attracted national attention as a standout example of responsible, human-centred AI in adult social care.
BBC News highlighted how the council “turned an experienced worker into an AI chatbot” and transformed Geraldine’s knowledge into round-the-clock support.
ITV News filmed in Peterborough’s TEC demonstration flat, showing the impact on hospital discharge, independence at home and staff workload.
The Local Government Association, ADASS East and AI.GOV.UK have all showcased Hey Geraldine as best practice in public sector AI deployment.
Why this matters for other councils
For Peterborough, Hey Geraldine has meant measurable time savings, significant cost avoidance, more consistent and earlier use of TEC, and stronger support for staff working under intense pressure. Crucially, it has reinforced - rather than replaced - the human judgement and relationships at the heart of good social care.
For other local authorities, the lesson is clear: with the right design, governance and partnership, AI can safely turn the best of your internal expertise into everyday support for every practitioner, helping you deliver more personalised, cost-effective care with the resources you already have.
