Uniting NSW.ACT frees time for client care with Azure-based AI assistant

Australian nonprofit Uniting NSW.ACT frontline workers make a difference in people’s lives across the state of New South Wales (NSW) and the federal district Australian Capital Territory (ACT). They run early learning and childcare centers, ensuring youngsters have a nurturing place to learn, play, and grow. They support senior citizens with home care, respite, independent living services, healthcare, and more so elders can live full lives. They help children involved in the foster care system, individuals struggling with homelessness, and people facing a mental health crisis. “I just love it, being there with clients, making them happy, making their day,” says Sue Arrow, a Uniting home care worker.

Uniting now serves 148,000 clients across its diverse services each year, with a goal to expand that reach to 200,000 people by 2032. Meanwhile, a workforce shortage of 344,000 workers in Australia, with carers for disabled and aged people topping the list of in-need professions, makes staffing a challenge for service organizations across the country. 

Uniting collaborated with Microsoft partners HSO and Engage Squared to address these parallel challenges. With the AI-powered and Azure-based digital assistant named Buddy, Uniting staff are maximizing their time for direct client care and improving the quality of that service. “Uniting's digital assistant Buddy will revolutionize the way our employees engage with clients by bringing systems and information to the point of care. This transformation will ensure that our frontline staff can provide timely and accurate assistance,” explains Ramesh Raghavan, Head of Digital, Innovation, and Experience at Uniting.

The solution is also helping Uniting attract, onboard, and retain staff, fueling its growth goals and commitment to quality of work life. “This AI-powered solution is transforming the way our employees work,” explains Andrew Dome, Chief Digital Information Officer at Uniting. “This digital assistant is their ‘buddy,’ enabling them to do things faster than they’ve ever done before—and returning time back to our employees to care for our customers.” 

Reducing administrative workload to free time for client care

About 12,000 Uniting employees deliver on Uniting’s promise of creating a better future for communities by caring for the elderly, teaching preschool, supporting people with disabilities, offering mental health care, and more. Most staff in the senior services department work without a dedicated device, and many are remote workers who travel from client to client—sometimes in remote areas hours from a Uniting office. Formerly, these workers had to take handwritten notes then later enter a case note at a shared kiosk or laptop in a hotel, when details were far from fresh.

Uniting's AI-fueled digital assistant transforms this process. “Buddy simplifies the day for our workers so they can focus on primary care,” explains Jowe Esguerra, Digital Innovation Specialist at Uniting.

Soon, frontline workers will be able to create case notes in Buddy on their smartphones. They can immediately have their notes translated, transcribed, and summarized. Once information is verified, Buddy will integrate the validated case note to the external care management system.

The new case note process enables workers to capture all the relevant details that need to be captured, such as what medications were dispensed. The more complete record made possible by the immediacy of Buddy helps staff follow up on medical concerns, whether they are the client’s regular carer or are brand-new to the relationship. The details also help staff get to know each client individually so they can provide the warm, personalized care that is central to Uniting’s mission.

“Buddy empowers our employees to make a meaningful impact, improving both their experience and the overall client journey," Raghavan says.

Buddy also reduces the time needed to enter a case note from 15 to 2 minutes. As carers see an average of three or four senior clients daily, this saves nearly an hour each day. “Taking the burden of those transactional activities returns time back to provide more care and look after our customers better,” Dome says. That could mean the difference of holding a client’s hand a little longer, listening to an extra reminiscence, or double-checking the comfort of a bandage.

Easily accessing policies for informed care

As a large, complex organization in a highly regulated sector, Uniting has a lot of policies and procedures. Buddy now helps staff navigate the nonprofit’s 1,600 policies and procedures documents to deliver the highest quality care.

Buddy was trained using an agent-driven Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture, built on top of Azure OpenAI Service. Human feedback was used to constantly refine both the agentic retrieval process and improve the source policy material. The tool synthesizes information from multiple sources and links to reference materials for additional details for verification. In addition, limits within the model restrict Buddy to pull information only from the policies and procedures in SharePoint, not from sources that include personally identifiable information (PII). Staff never inadvertently gain access to information they should not see.

While staff training remains important, workers sometimes face out-of-the-ordinary circumstances. They can now use the chatbot functionality in Buddy to surface actionable instructions so they always know what to do. For example, if a worker has a child welfare concern while making a home visit, Buddy draws on Uniting’s knowledge index within SharePoint to generate concrete directions in a conversational, easy-to-understand tone.

“There’s so much for staff to remember. Accessing guidelines quickly makes it a lot easier to do the right thing, take the right steps, and stick to strict reporting timelines,” says Kerry Lambert, Stakeholder Engagement Manager for Local Area Coordination Services at Uniting. Being able to take the necessary actions immediately, rather than at the end of the day when they can sift through a manual, could also get vulnerable clients the help they need faster.

Esguerra estimates that using Buddy commonly saves staff a half-hour per day. Querying Buddy on what to do in more involved instances—such as being involved in a vehicle accident while driving to a client in the outback of Australia—could save staff hours, plus give them peace of mind as they follow a step-by-step instruction generated by the AI solution.

Uniting’s Policies & Procedures SharePoint site is constantly updated to reflect best practices and evolving governmental regulations. Since Buddy pulls from the knowledge index every time staff type in a question, they can be confident they always get the latest information. This improves on the old system of printed manuals, which can quickly become out of date.

Finally, the generative AI tool empowers staff to look up answers themselves. This reinforces a culture of learning and frees up managers, who used to field frequent questions from staff. Supervisors now have more time to focus on their own roles, including staff development and juggling the responsibilities of leading multiple teams. Lambert says, “It empowers them to find the information instead of me finding solutions for them.”

Enabling growth to care for more Australians

Dome anticipates that Buddy will add to Uniting’s reputation as an organization dedicated to clients and staff alike. “We’re going to become known as this great employer that has digital tools that enable staff to do their job more efficiently and better than ever before,” he says. “That enables us to attract employees, even during a workforce shortage.”

Buddy is also helping with onboarding. Instead of trying to memorize hundreds of pages of a manual, then relying on a supervisor to answer the inevitable questions that come up, new staff can now get role-specific answers to their questions. “When you’re new in an organization, it can be hard to navigate the systems, protocols, and policies. Access to Buddy allows them to familiarize themselves with how to succeed in their role, at their own pace,” Esguerra says.

Additionally, Dome says Buddy will help with retention. “Our people want to spend more time providing care—that's what they’re employed to do and what they want to do,” Dome says. Decreasing administrative tasks allows them to focus on person-to-person interactions that energize staff and clients alike. Additionally, streamlining paperwork through the AI-powered tool may help avoid burnout and turnover. Keeping experienced staff on-hand enables Uniting’s growth targets and improves the quality of care for clients.

Iterating to improve employee and client experience

When deciding how to build Buddy, Uniting and HSO considered the best approach that would allow them the flexibility to move forward with a minimum viable project and leave room to grow. “Microsoft Azure is the cornerstone of our enterprise architecture, so it made logical sense to use all the services in Azure as building blocks to create the whole app,” says Paras Jethwani, Chief Enterprise Architect at Uniting.

Relying on Azure App Service, rather than building a solution from scratch, “sped up our time to market,” he adds. Working with HSO further expedited development. They integrated Azure OpenAI Service into the apps, where they created and trained custom generative AI solutions such as the agent that powers the policy and procedures lookup function.

An ecosystem of Microsoft products helps Uniting prioritize security and privacy. “Building AI solutions on Microsoft Azure allows us to guarantee the highest standards of privacy and legal compliance, while leveraging the industry’s most advanced technology,” says Jourdan Templeton, CTO of Data and AI at HSO.

Azure provides a strong security foundation with tools and services enabling threat detection, firewalls, and user access management. Microsoft Defender provides threat intelligence and AI-enabled automated attack disruption to protect against increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals. Microsoft Purview offers a centralized platform for data governance and compliance, keeping PII and other sensitive data safe. “Microsoft tools ensure our data is secure and access is limited to the right people who need that information,” Dome says.

Uniting continues to iterate on the AI-powered solution, adding use cases and features. For example, the nonprofit plans to add voice-to-text capabilities that will enable additional departments to create quick case notes that flow into other case management platforms.

“That’s the beauty of building this solution in Microsoft Azure,” Jethwani says. “It’s an evolutionary journey. We have the flexibility to continue to adapt and innovate."

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