Councils, Local Authorities and Refernet.
Effective advice and early intervention help prevent problems from escalating, reducing pressure on public services and improving outcomes for residents. Secure, efficient referrals are at the heart of this process.

Refernet is a UK-based referral management platform that enables councils, local authorities and their partner organisations to refer people safely, track progress and measure outcomes across a town, city or region.

By bringing referral activity into a single network, Refernet helps organisations work together more effectively while providing valuable insight into local service delivery.

Connecting local services
Councils work with a wide range of charities, advice providers, community groups and statutory services, all using different systems and processes.

Historically, referrals have often relied on phone calls and emails, making it difficult to track activity, monitor outcomes or understand a person’s journey through local support services.

Refernet in Westminster

Building a successful Network
The most successful referral networks have a dedicated champion within the council or partnership who promotes the service and encourages organisations to participate.

They would typically have a dedicated web page on their own website which acts as a promotional and additional search destination for potential network partners.

This role typically includes:

• Inviting new partner organisations to join the network.
• Supporting users with onboarding and training.
• Encouraging ongoing engagement and good referral practices.

Combined with Refernet’s automated notifications and reminders, this helps maintain an active and effective referral community.

We can’t emphasise this enough, and our experience shows… any online referral network will only be successful with the ongoing support and promotion of a dedicated referral team.

Outcomes and reporting
Refernet is designed to make referrals simple.

We encourage organisations to keep referral forms concise, reducing the burden on busy frontline staff and increasing adoption across the network.

While partner organisations continue to manage their own cases within their existing systems, Refernet provides visibility of referral activity and outcomes across the wider network. This helps demonstrate impact, identify trends, support funding applications and evidence the value of local services.

• A single purpose online service, dedicated to digital referral. Easy to understand and promote to Advice Agencies / Council.
• Departments / Charities across your jurisdiction. Many years of trusted use across the UK by major charities and councils.
• A professional, adaptive user interface, intuitive, and easy to use - for all users on any device.
• An optional general public self-referral service you can use via your own website, social media and other campaigns.
• Scaleability to whole cities and regions, with reports on referral activity and performance.
• Functionality that allows agencies to refer amongst each other in the network - the system.
• Administrator can decide ‘who sees who’, amongst the agencies in the group.
• Regional options. Allows regional self-referral, and regional reporting.
• Security and GDPR compliance - own your own data.

• Budget options which include for unlimited agency users (within your agreed contracted region), and unlimited public self-referral.
• SMS facility to send text messages to clients (keeps clients up-to-date, with a referral ID number and which Agency is taking care of them).
• Secure document transfer so documents can be attached safely, and only appropriate relevant parties to the referral have access.
• A focus on outcomes and reports - good for funding and referral activity audits.
• Flexibility within its referral form, that can be edited to suit your network’s needs.
• An active development programme, which is constantly updated and improved.
• Dedicated support via telephone, email, video training modules and live Zoom webinars.
• Structured so no one has access to any of your data, apart from the parties that are handling the referral.