INA ‒ intelligent form completion assistant for supporting rough sleepers - Civic Innovation Platform

Why are you a strong team?

We combine strong experience in language processing research and products with practical knowledge of social work and academic expertise in homelessness research. We are strongly committed to rough sleepers as a population and work together directly with those affected by homelessness. These are the ideal conditions for setting things in motion and finding innovative solutions.

Explain your idea in three sentences.

'INA' is a virtual, discreet and intelligent assistant for social workers. First, it identifies potentially relevant benefits in a dialogue with the people affected. Then, it helps fill in the necessary forms correctly and prepare the supporting documents needed. It reduces the burden on social workers and helps people who need help.

What makes your idea special?

Instead of building a ‘static’ rule-based system, our system learns from real counselling dialogue between homeless people and social workers. By doing this, 'INA' learns what constitutes good advice: conversation, empathy and competence. The mix of an app and a natural-language interface overcomes any potential fear of contact, especially for younger people needing help, and enables straightforward support.

What are the next steps?

The first step now is to record actual counselling so that we can create a good data corpus for our AI. To this end, we are developing ethics and data policies which provide information and explanations to all stakeholders; we are also experimenting for the right ‘technical’ set-up that does not disrupt the advice being given.