January 2025 was ‘AI month’ across the UK – including at CC2i with our evolving AI4 portfolio
Across January the focus has been squarely on AI; from the government’s announcement around the ‘vast potential for rejuvenating UK public services’ and the publication of their AI Opportunities Action Plan, to the launch of the immediately popular Deepseek AI app.
For CC2i, the start of 2025 has also been focused on our growing ‘AI4’ portfolio; with significant progress working with council partners on the emerging ASC information and advice assistants, to new service ideas, council partners and opportunities. Here are some of the headlines:
AI4ASC: The emerging AI4ASC product is an AI-driven approach giving people access to trusted Adult Social Care information and advice. Co-designed with Bradford Council and Norfolk County Council, two amazing digital assistants Annie and Cora are in live testing via WhatsApp and connected into the council website.
Having worked through the curation of trusted local, national and third sector content (as well as building a live callable function into council care directories), the digital assistants are about to move into the public domain and have real time, 24/7 conversations with unpaid carers and people wanting to know more about ASC services.
Cora is Norfolk’s first public facing use of AI, we’re really excited to be launching her to support our unpaid carers.” – Gail Harvey, Digital Inclusion Strategy Programme Manager, Norfolk County Council
The key elements for the councils are:
- Enabling a ‘conversation with the content’ on an individual’s own terms;
- Delivering access on the channels the public use (e.g. WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, online) as well as use by call centre staff;
- Supporting people whose first language isn’t English with AI’s in-built translation function.
Alongside all the technical development, two new council partners are confirmed to jump on board for the next phase of the AI4ASC programme, and impact assessments are underway in terms of usage, channel shift, equality and more.
More on this work here.
The first iteration of AI4 Public Health (PH) specifically looks at supporting people to give up smoking. Co-designed with Medway Council, the AI4PH ‘Quit Coach’ offers a combination of scheduled structured guidance, as well as the ability for people to seek advice 24/7, again in any language.
Conversations with a range of councils are ongoing, specifically about the opportunity Quit Coach offers by being delivered on WhatsApp, to complement ongoing face to face and telephone programmes.
The last couple of weeks have been focused on marketing as well as building the structured engagement and data capture models, but now through testing, ‘go live’ is set for February 17th, so evidence and impact will begin to be captured. Alongside our attendance at the Smoking Cessation and Health conference in early March, we hosted a webinar on March 11th to update on progress.
AI4LD: We have also had discussions with a number of councils about the opportunity AI presents to support people with learning disabilities. From the way in which the AI ‘digital assistants’ can engage with people dependent on need, with a different ‘voice’ and approach, quickly sharing straightforward, relevant information and advice (24/7), to building in a capability to check in with people regularly.
Whilst this is still very much an emerging conversation, the idea of running some pilots across LD in close co-design with the LD community is something we are keen on.
AI4V&CS: Following on from conversations with LD and voluntary sector colleagues, we also see a real opportunity to help support the aggregation of directories, which are often quite disparate and diverse in their offer, currency and use.
Holding really valuable local information on key services, directories can be under-utilised and suffer from access issues. Again, using the power of AI to pull in trusted information from directories – as well as different platforms and sites (like Facebook) – there is a real opportunity to move on from more cumbersome directories to a more personal, real time approach.
One particular point coming out of our ‘AI month’, includes the difference of the AI4 approach to ‘chatbots’. On the whole, chatbots are trained to answer popular questions with specific answers and information.The AI4 approach moves this approach on, by being more responsive, learning from the conversation and responding more personally. This important distinction helps to build trust in the ‘digital assistant’ and embed them as a valued ‘contact’ with people who draw on care and support services, one which they will reach out to and enable an ongoing conversation.
Finally, we know councils across the land are receiving hundreds of ‘hey do some AI with us’ emails, the arena is so noisy, the technology is moving at real pace and there is so much to take in. That’s why we hope the work we have done in collaboration with councils already, will pave the way for others to more easily see the impact and opportunity.
We have specifically started in areas of information and advice, so that the challenges AI presents in terms of information governance and personal data, as well as the potential impact on equality, diversity and inclusion – and other tricky questions – can be thought about in parallel with initial results from these less risky pilots.
