Magic Notes

There is a rising homelessness crisis around the world. Even in the UK, the world’s sixth biggest economy, there are 14.4 million people living in poverty and over 350,000 people without homes. Rising living costs, inequality, global conflicts, housing and job market pressures, discrimination, and inadequate social support systems exacerbate the problem. The scale of the problem is increasing: England saw a 14% increase in the number of homeless households from 2022 to 2023, and Scotland and Wales reported 10% and 7% year-on-year increases (1). The UN has estimated that globally, 1.6 billion people live in inadequate housing (2).  

This rising homelessness crisis is inextricably linked with the problems of economic inclusion and job opportunities identified in this Challenge. On the one hand, homelessness can be a product of someone’s exclusion from the job market: rising living costs and local factors like housing market pressures all mean that people who are unemployed very frequently struggle to afford accommodation for themselves and their families. A Centre for Homelessness Impact report found that “poorly paid, intermittent or insecure employment can often present a homelessness risk because of the lack of financial resources available to pay for housing, or to respond to eviction or exclusion from existing accommodation if this occurs” (3). Conversely, homelessness can also be a contributing factor to unemployment: holding down a job can become impossible for those without stable accommodation. 

These individual challenges are compounded by deep issues at the systems level. Frontline staff provide critical support and services to help those affected by homelessness and unemployment, but outdated case management systems and unsustainable workloads are undermining their hard work and commitment. The reality is that the people most qualified to solve this issue - frontline social workers and caseworkers - are spending a huge percentage of their time on mandatory administrative tasks such as typing up case notes: a single report currently takes between 40 minutes and 2 hours to complete. The nature of casework means that unanticipated urgent tasks get in the way of completing this arduous administration, meaning that write-ups and assessments can take up to 6 weeks to complete. Ultimately, this has led to a massive backlog of cases. Behind each report is an individual in crisis, unable to return to stable housing and employment because of administrative inefficiency.

Beam is using a combination of innovative approaches and technologies to address both the individual and systemic challenges described above. 

To tackle the individual challenges of securing good employment, Beam offers 1:1 caseworker support and targeted financial assistance, a holistic support model that provides tangible, lasting solutions to people facing crisis. Our 1:1 support approach allows beneficiaries to chart their course out of unemployment, working collaboratively with caseworkers to identify and overcome financial and emotional barriers. An indicative programme journey is as follows: 

1. Introduction & Diagnostic Assessment: Caseworkers set expectations for the programme and assess the service user’s skills and employment barriers, then co-creating a tailored Action Plan. This plan sets SMART goals to help the service user approach or secure employment.

2. Digital Skills: Caseworkers deliver thorough training on employment-based IT skills - e.g., MS Office and emails - ensuring service users feel comfortable navigating technology on their own.

3. CV-writing & Application Support: Caseworkers guide service users to develop a bespoke CV and apply for relevant jobs using platforms like Linkedin.

4. Interview Preparation: Service users practise interview techniques such as the STAR method in 1-1 mock interviews with their caseworker. 

5. Financial Assistance and Community Platform: Key financial barriers are removed. The Beam Foundation purchases larger items (e.g., training courses) and issues vouchers to beneficiaries for smaller items (e.g., work attire). No cash grants are given to beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are given a personal page to share their story, connect with a supportive peer and professional network, and receive donations. A public campaign will only be launched if it is safe; beneficiaries can remain anonymous. 

6. Exit Plan and Sustainability: Upon completion of support sessions, individuals receive a personalised exit plan ensuring readiness to leave the programme to sustain the programme's impact. Beneficiaries also receive on-demand support from their caseworker three months after the programme ends. 

Our personalised support is augmented by innovative technologies aimed at transforming the effectiveness of the social care sector.  We are developing user-friendly digital tools designed to streamline caseworker administration and free up valuable time for meaningful interaction with service users. Such investments not only enhance productivity but also foster a culture of care and well-being within the workforce.

To that end, Beam has now developed Magic Notes, the first AI-powered app specifically designed for caseworkers. It allows frontline staff employed by local and central government agencies or charities to record and transcribe meetings before using generative AI to create a custom summary that can be added to a client record system or database. Magic Notes was first developed for and in collaboration with Beam’s own caseworkers as a plugin for Beam’s internally developed client record system. However, it is platform agnostic and can be used by caseworkers using any system to manage client notes.

Beam supports individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness - including rough sleepers, individuals in temporary housing, refugees, asylum seekers, young people and those facing multiple disadvantages (e.g. mental health issues) - into stable employment. The focus of our casework programmes is the 14.4 million people in the UK who live in poverty (1), including the 350,000 who are homeless by conservative estimates. They are currently underserved by inflexible, one-size-fits-all programming that does not take into account individual circumstances. Employment programmes may help individuals find a job initially, but with no ongoing support, no financial assistance for training courses or basic needs, and no incentive to monitor how long people remain in that job, the benefits are often short-lived. 

Beam’s approach focuses on breaking the cycle of unemployment by offering caseworker support beyond starting employment and working holistically with people and their families to remove barriers to long-term employment, such as unstable housing or a lack of suitable clothing or equipment. 

To date Beam has supported 3,600+ people into homes, employment, and training, including supporting 1,700 people into employment across 72 different careers. Behind each statistic are individual lives, often families, like Decoda, who was made homeless after having a baby. Decoda worked with her caseworker, Anna, to pursue a social care qualification, enabling her to graduate and secure employment as a family support worker. Our community platform raised £4,880 for her qualification from 605 individual donors, foundations and corporate donors. Decoda shared updates as she began her course, qualified and began her new job, and her supporters were able to leave messages encouraging her on her journey (2). Decoda described, “Words can't describe how happy I am to have completed this and to be looking forward to something greater and I must say it would not have been possible without your help.”

In addition to serving individuals, Beam is developing systemic solutions to serve overburdened caseworkers and social care workers. The rising demand for services is not being matched by a rise in the number of caseworkers, leading to unsustainable workloads and ultimately burnout. Research with these users has shown that up to 70% of their time is spent on admin. Staff are underserved by current AI-powered productivity tools, which are not designed for context, frequently inaccurate, and difficult to use. 

Magic Notes is a fit-for-purpose tool designed to free up caseworkers to spend more time with the vulnerable people they support and allow them to support more people into jobs and homes. Our pilot evaluation with one council in London has shown that Magic Notes reduced admin time by 63%, with summaries that are 98% accurate. Qualitative feedback reflected high satisfaction with the solution: one social worker said, “We get a lot of products to test. Most of them are a waste of time, but this one is actually really good!”

First and foremost, our team comprises individuals who have either experienced the issues we address themselves or have previous professional experience in the field. This connection gives us unique insights into the challenges and barriers our beneficiaries face, driving our passion and commitment to making a tangible difference in their lives. For example, Regina was living in temporary accommodation with her young daughter after leaving an abusive relationship. With part-time work and low wages, she soon fell into debt. Beam supported Regina into work by funding childcare, technology and travel, and she in turn came to work for Beam as a caseworker. You can watch her TED talk here.

Cofounders Alex Stephany and Seb Barker bring complementary perspectives to the problem, combining innovative technological solutions and deep experience of homelessness prevention programmes. For their fuller biographies, see the question “How is your Team Lead connected to the community or communities in which your project is based?”

We understand that solutions cannot be top-down but must instead be co-created with those affected by these issues. In designing and implementing our programmes, the team actively engages with the communities we serve to ensure that their input, ideas, and desires are at the forefront of our solution design and implementation processes. In addition, the model was created with input from industry experts from Homeless Link, Thames Reach, and The Connection at St Martin’s. 

We also engage with the communities we serve in the monitoring and evaluation of our programmes. These engagements allow us to listen to the voices of people with lived experience of homelessness and ensure our programmes remain iterative. For example, when we are designing our support programmes, we actively seek input from homeless individuals on the types of assistance they need. This deep engagement is reflected in high feedback scores from individuals: 9.6/10 average from over 1,000 responses. Donor and partner feedback is also encouraged. Cllr Lisa Homan, Hammersmith and Fulham Cabinet Member for Housing, recently said, “Beam is a ground-breaking platform. Our partnership with Beam gives local people the opportunity to directly help those in most need.”

Our approach has won innovation grants from the Mayor of London and Nesta, and 40+ awards including the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and the London Homelessness Awards. We have strong partnerships with over 80 government bodies and local service providers in each community we operate in, ensuring our services enhance existing ones and do not duplicate efforts.  

Beam is at the growth stage as it has applied its current model across 84 different local regions in the UK, including 26 communities in London, reaching over 3,600 people to date. Beam has a hybrid structure, described in more detail in the “Business Model” question below. Beam Up Ltd, a social enterprise, completed a seed funding round in 2020, and raised Series A funding in 2023 and early 2024. The Beam Foundation, a registered charity, has raised £5m in donations to date, through a combination of crowdfunding from individuals, corporate partnerships, and philanthropic grants.

Magic Notes as a product is at the pilot stage. One pilot has been completed with ten social workers employed by a major London council. Four further councils have now agreed to pilot the solution.

Support from Solve will support our work in four main areas:

• Magic Notes offers the potential to transform the social work sector in the UK, and ultimately across the world. We are seeking advice and mentorship from those with experience taking technology for good to national and international scale, to ensure that we continue to grow sustainably, with impact at the centre.

• The Beam Foundation is supported by a large group of individual donors who believe strongly in our mission. Support with our marketing and supporter engagement strategies will enable us to grow this pool of donors and thereby support even more people into jobs and homes.

• On the technical front, we are now working on making the Magic Notes platform fit for scale, including improving processing times and configuring the technology for different meeting platforms. We are keen to speak with AI for Good experts and other Solvers working with AI tools to ensure that we build robust and scalable technology.

• As our strategy involves forming partnerships with local and central government, we would benefit from connecting with other Solvers with a B2G model to share best practices for success.

Approaches to unemployment and homelessness often involve patchwork temporary responses, cycling individuals in and out of emergency short-term assistance programmes without addressing an individual’s fundamental underlying needs, such as stable housing, secure work, and access to well-being support.  Beam has an innovative structure which allows it to address these issues in the long term. Beam Up Ltd, a social enterprise, offers 1:1 caseworker support and personalised pathways out of unemployment through strategic partnerships with over 80 local and central government bodies. Targeted financial assistance, in the form of course fees, vouchers for work equipment, laptops and phones for jobseekers, among other items, is offered by the Beam Foundation, a registered charity funded through crowdfunding and philanthropic donations from foundations and companies. 

This hybrid structure and “Root and Branch” approach means we can provide financial assistance, which overcomes initial hurdles to exiting unemployment, and then offer training and confidence-building to help sustain that exit for good. As well as delivering high sustainment rates, this innovative structure is uniquely sustainable.

We have now used our deep organisational experience in the social care sector to build technology which has the potential to fundamentally change the lives of social care and caseworkers, and have a transformative effect on the number of people who can be reached. 

The technology of Magic Notes is innovative in three main ways:

• It is optimised to unobtrusively support the workflows of social workers and caseworkers supporting people who are unemployed and/or experiencing homelessness. For example, the technology is optimised to work on a caseworker’s phone. Early user research showed the majority of meetings took place in person. Opening a laptop felt obstructive compared to the more natural action of placing a phone on a table.

• It is highly accurate specifically within the unemployment and homelessness sectors. Many caseworkers supporting people into employment have spent years, and in many cases decades, taking written notes. An initial frustrating experience with inaccurate AI-generated content would likely lead to a caseworker becoming resistant to AI-powered tools altogether. In an initial pilot with a local council in the UK, the summaries generated by Magic Notes were 98% accurate, requiring small changes such as correction to name spellings. This high accuracy in a specific context generates confidence and ensures ongoing usage.

• The tool is designed for users with little or no previous experience with generative AI tools. Other current AI-powered tools often require careful phrasing of questions to generate the required outputs, as well as numerous inputs to correct misunderstandings. Caseworkers in this sector need a tool that delivers accurate and usable content without this level of user knowledge. To deliver this, we built templates into the app to allow caseworkers to choose the relevant session type (e.g. an initial assessment, case review meeting, supervision, a legally mandated Care Act Assessment, etc.) and the format for notes and summaries. We also built a ‘redraft’ feature that enables rapid edits.

ACTIVITIES 

Magic Notes

1. Social workers and caseworkers download the app.

2. After getting consent from everyone present, Magic Notes records each meeting with service users, produces a transcript, and generates a summary.

Beam Services

1. Local or central government bodies refer individuals experiencing unemployment and/or homelessness in the UK to Beam. 

2. A Beam caseworker conducts a bespoke, comprehensive assessment to identify their unique needs and barriers to their employment and housing goals. 

3. Caseworkers deliver 1:1 and group support sessions to fill knowledge barriers, including budgeting, well-being, confidence-building, CV creation, interview practice, and finding and sustaining a tenancy.  

4. Financial barriers to employment and stable housing are identified and funded.

5. Sustainment support for up to 12 months post-outcome.

OUTPUTS

1. Beam's caseworkers deliver 1:1 and group support. 

2. Beam users receive training courses, technology such as laptops or mobile phones, vouchers for work clothes or equipment, and support with housing costs, depending on their individual needs and circumstances.

IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES 

Magic Notes

1. Caseworkers complete administrative tasks in a shorter amount of time (average 63% reduction). Caseworkers get through admin tasks in a shorter time frame (1 week rather than 6 weeks).

2. A reduction in the wait time for assessments and follow-up services. 

3. Better connection between service users and caseworkers. In the pilot, one caseworker reported “Having more time meant I could focus on the person in front of me and knowing that information was captured.”

Beam Services

1. Increased awareness and understanding of available resources and support services among homeless individuals.

2. Improved access to basic necessities such as shelter, food and clothing for homeless individuals.

3. More Beam users achieve the goals they identified at the start of their journey compared with other programmes. For those looking for jobs, 81% find work and for those looking for a home, 78% find housing within 12 weeks. The UK government’s Work and Health programme reported that only 31% achieved a job outcome within 24 months (1). 

INTERMEDIATE OUTCOMES

Magic Notes

1. Higher job satisfaction for caseworkers. 

2. A reduction in the backlog of cases waiting to be processed by local authorities, and in the amount of time services users spend unemployed and without stable accommodation while they wait for their case to be processed.

Beam Services

1. Adoption of healthier lifestyle practices and behaviours among homeless individuals.

2. Increased engagement with support services and programmes aimed at addressing underlying issues, such as addiction and mental health.

3. Beam users sustain the outcomes they achieve (86% sustain work beyond three months, and 95% sustain their tenancy for at least six months). 

ULTIMATE OUTCOMES

Magic Notes

1. Establishment of a more resilient social work sector equipped to address the diverse and evolving needs of homeless individuals with efficiency and compassion.

2. Enhanced capacity of social work sector to adapt to changing circumstances and emerging challenges, ensuring continuous support for vulnerable populations.

Beam Services

1. Enhanced economic prosperity and stability for formerly homeless individuals, leading to sustained independence and self-sufficiency.

2. Improved overall well-being and quality of life for formerly homeless individuals, including better physical and mental health outcomes.

Beam’s mission is to transform how the world supports those left behind through the power of people and technology, working with and championing marginalised groups, including individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness, refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, individuals leaving prison, and other people facing disadvantage. Specifically, we aim to make progress towards:

• UN SDG 1.2 - By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions. In the UK, this is defined as people living in households with income below 60% of the median in that year. We address this goal by helping people who meet this definition into good jobs and stable accommodation, which are both known to increase economic prosperity. To monitor our progress against this SDG we track the total number of people who successfully achieve their goal with Beam.

• UN indicator 8.5.2 - Unemployment rate, by sex, age and persons with disabilities. We contribute to progress against this indicator by helping people into good jobs through 1:1 caseworker support and the removal of financial barriers, and monitor the total number of people we support into employment, and the percentage of people who sustain jobs for 3 months or more, disaggregated by sex and age.

• UN SDG 11.1 - By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums. We address this goal by supporting homeless people into safe housing, ensuring they have access to basic services, and removing financial barriers such as deposits for rental properties. We track our progress by monitoring the total number of people prevented from homelessness, the total number of people moved on from homelessness, and the total number of people who sustain stable employment for six months or more.

We measure impact through sustained tenancies, job placements and salaries, hours of casework support, and beneficiary feedback (9.6/10 average from over 1,000 responses). Our beneficiary-led approach drives continuous improvement; for example, based on feedback endorsing its effectiveness and non-intrusiveness, we adopted WhatsApp as our primary communication tool, resulting in a 20% increase in casework meeting attendance.

Outputs encompass customised action plans to address beneficiaries’ obstacles and aspirations. Beneficiaries receive 15 hours of 1:1 casework support, tailored to their goals, covering everything from crafting cover letters to budgeting and navigating utility bills. Subsequently, through targeted financial assistance, The Beam Foundation overcomes financial blockers by covering expenses like the first month’s rent, deposits, skills training, work clothes, course fees and childcare. 

Beam’s Caseworker Team Leads use our custom-built Performance Management Dashboard. Biweekly, they evaluate the quality of action plans, log the housing and employment outcomes we achieve, the consistency of our processes, and ensure all feedback is incorporated into our delivery model. Our Operations Leads and Product Team review participant feedback gathered through NPS surveys and qualitative methods to improve our service. 

Magic Notes is a web app that can be used with Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Android devices. Caseworkers can use Magic Notes to record each meeting with service users after getting consent from everyone present, whether the meeting takes place in person, over a phone call or using video conferencing software. The app provides a transcription of the conversation, automatically detecting different speakers. The app then uses AI to create a summary of the key points, pulling out all of the important details. This summary is sent via email to the caseworker. The caseworker can then choose from a range of different template formats, customised for their particular setting, and also use AI to make changes to the summary report, such as correcting the spelling of a name or changing from paragraphs to bullet points. The summary report can be copied and pasted into relevant systems or documents with one click. 

As caseworker reports contain the most personal and sensitive data about service users, we offer gold standard data protection and full compliance. Data Protection Impact Assessments are carried out before any deployment of the tool, and all data is stored and processed securely in the UK. Critically, the AI models used for transcription and summaries are hosted securely and the data is never used to test or train models. 

142 full-time and 3 part-time.

Beam - 7 years

Magic Notes - less than 1 year

Organisationally, 38% of Beam’s senior staff and 60% of trustees have lived experience of the issues we address. 60% of trustees are female, and 40% are from global majority backgrounds. We prioritise hiring individuals with lived experience to our team, including Beam beneficiaries. Our Head of People and Culture, Sasha Watson, specialises in DEI and is Master CIPD certified. She regularly audits the values and standards of our organisation regarding recruiting practices, the inclusivity of the work environment, and centring lived experience. 

To reinforce good practice, we address hiring bias through tooling, diverse hiring panels, and hiring individuals with lived experience. In addition to risk-assessing our beneficiaries to ensure we are the right service to support them, Beam’s caseworkers are trained in mental health first aid, trauma-informed care, and supporting victims of crime and abuse. Our frontline team also includes qualified counsellors who provide issue-specific training depending on emerging risks for our cohorts.

The people we work with are not passive recipients of support but active participants in our programmes’ design, development, and evaluation. We offer a person-led service, including flexible and virtual delivery outside beneficiaries’ working hours to complement childcare and other duties. We also use accessible communication channels, adapting delivery for beneficiaries with learning differences and for whom English is not their first language.

Beam’s impact on the lives of those experiencing homelessness and unemployment is enabled by its hybrid structure. Beam Up Ltd is a social enterprise which provides services to government partners, and The Beam Foundation provides financial support to individuals. The relationship between the two entities is symbiotic and structured to maximise impact.

UK government bodies refer people experiencing or at risk of homelessness to Beam Up Ltd, a social enterprise, via a contracting model. As part of these contracts, Beam has provided 1:1 caseworker support to over 80 local and central government bodies. Revenue from these services covers all operational costs of service delivery and all overheads relating to Beam’s operations. 

The Beam Foundation is a registered charity, providing financial support to individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness. With all overheads covered by revenues generated by the social enterprise, 100% of donations from public donors, corporate partners, trusts and foundations are used to pay for items and services required by beneficiaries. 

This business model allows us to offer highly cost-effective services to government bodies while also maximising the impact of every donation. It is the reason why Beam has been able to scale support so significantly: from 578 people supported in 2021 to 1,743 in 2023 (200% growth in 2 years).

Magic Notes is developed by the social enterprise, and will generate revenue from contracts with local and central government bodies who employ caseworkers. Annual fees will be determined based on the number of hours of audio to be handled. Based on time savings identified in the initial piloting, we estimate that implementing Magic Notes will offer 6-9 x ROI for our customers.

To recap, Beam constitutes both a social enterprise (Beam Up Ltd) and a registered UK charity (The Beam Foundation). 

Both of these entities have distinct sources of income and are mutually reinforcing from a financial sustainability standpoint. This is because, across both entities, we have the flexibility to generate income from: public and private sector customer revenue; social, private and institutional investment; charitable funding from trusts, foundations, corporates and individual donors; and other sources such as GiftAid and R&D tax credits.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

Beam Up Ltd generates income from three main sources:

1. Revenue from government partners

2. Grant funding

3. Investment capital 

Taking each in turn:

Revenue. Beam generates revenue from partnerships with Local Government (LG) and Central Government (CG). LG partners are local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland (from Camden to Aberdeen) and CG partners include the Department of Work & Pensions and the Ministry of Justice. 

In the last 12 months, Beam generated £4.8m of revenue. Of this, £3.8m (80%) came from LG partnerships and £869k from CG Partnerships (18%). The remaining 2% came from £71k of grant funding.

This represents 243% revenue growth since 2021, when Beam generated £1.4m of revenue.

We focus on long-term, sustainable income wherever possible:

• Our average partnership length is increasing, with some newer partnerships running over multiple years. This gives us an increasingly long-term source of income which helps with sustainability and planning.

• We renew and expand close to 90% of partnerships; as we continue to improve our service we aim to retain and grow these relationships even further. 

• We are diversifying our sources of income; from just a handful of London-based partnerships to over 80 partnerships across England, Scotland and Wales. 

Investment. As a rapidly-scaling social enterprise, Beam is able to raise significant amounts of equity funding. 

Our investor base consists of social impact funds, high net worth individuals, experienced founders and social entrepreneurs and institutional investors. We are careful to work only with investors that are aligned with our values and mission.

In October 2020, we raised £4m of seed funding. In late 2023 and early 2024 we raised Beam’s Series A in order to capitalise the organisation for future growth.

REGISTERED CHARITY

A broad range of sources and supporters fund our ongoing work. Historically, a significant proportion of our income was raised through small individual donations and monthly subscriptions via our Community Platform (“crowdfunding”).

While crowdfunding remains an important and dynamic part of our funding model, we are actively working to diversify our income streams. With the continuing growth of our partnerships with trusts, foundations, high-net-worth individuals, and corporations, we aim to reduce our reliance on crowdfunding over time. This includes investment in teams to grow income from:

• Trusts & Foundations

• SMEs via our innovative social impact platform Beam for Companies 

• Larger, bespoke corporate partnerships

We have already seen significant progress in growing and diversifying income. In January 2024 alone, we secured funding from the National Lottery, Garfield Weston, Dr. Martens Foundation and Glasspool.