About Karinya House
Karinya House for Mothers and Babies is a community based, not for profit organisation providing supported accommodation and outreach services to pregnant and parenting women in crisis, and their children. Most are escaping domestic violence, homelessness, or are completely isolated at a time when they are pregnant or caring for a newborn child. The organisation provides safe housing, casework and other support during pregnancy and birth, as well as connections to health, welfare, legal, educational and financial services. In 2016, Karinya House, with specialist funding for construction from the ACT Government, transitioned to a purpose-built facility, doubling capacity and creating a designated area for specialised outreach and group services.
What was the challenge?
The women supported by Karinya House are escaping various hardships and challenging personal circumstances, including trauma, abuse and controlling partner relationships. Karinya’s privacy and security needs from a technology standpoint included high security, robust systems that could be protected from cyber-stalking, hacking, identity theft and malicious cyber-attacks.
With the new facility, there came an important opportunity to implement, during the construction process, best-practice security as well as performance and efficiency boosting ICT systems. F1 Solutions provided the analysis, ICT system development, consultation with Housing ACT and Monarch Building Solutions, and negotiations with third party security, access and telecommunications services.
As the organisation was scaling and tending to the needs of more women and infants, its needs were growing. Better and more secure, resilient and high-performance hardware, software and managed services were essential.
Good technology
F1 Solutions has provided Karinya House with IT infrastructure and support since the partnership began in 2005. This service has been provided on a pro bono basis, with remote desktop support, technical on-call advice, website hosting and equipment maintenance and provision, and general ICT advice being provided on a significantly discounted basis.
F1 Solutions worked closely with non-technical stakeholders and administrative staff to help the organisation to define its needs, providing a roadmap for the IT upgrade. The solution covered the below service offerings to ensure Karinya House experienced minimal disruption to organisational activities
Dedicated account manager
Server and network - protection, support and monitoring
Desktop and hardware warranty, support and management
End-point antivirus protection
Email anti-spam
Service support desk including remote monitoring management and monthly maintenance reports
Cloud and on-site backup services
Software licence and renewal
After being introduced to F1 Solutions in 2005 Technology has changed dramatically for Karinya House. F1 Solutions knows what we do, respects what we do and understand what we do.
Jo Saccasan Finance and Business Manager - Karinya HouseThe benefits for Karinya House
F1 Solutions migrated Karinya House’s sensitive operational data to the cloud, helping the not for profit to modernise systems, harden its security stance and operate in a new, cloud-based infrastructure setting with managed services across the environment. The outcome is a modern, secure and efficient IT set-up. The managed services function enables, enhances and empowers the organisation’s essential work. F1 Advantage provides simple, per-user cost control at preferential prices, with bundled ongoing IT support that has saved Karinya House enormous time and effort.
This removes the distraction of technology management and ensures high productivity. It also introduces powerful resilience and data protection, with proactive monitoring to identify potential issues before they become problems. We at F1 Solutions are proud of our long attachment to this important organisation.
Simplification
The all-in-one user license model managed by an IT services business allows a higher level of visibility across the business, greater confidence in the data being presented, and a better ability to scale and leverage new technologies.
Increased performance
Not only was the new system more scalable, secure and resilient, it also increased efficiency, boosted performance and created a far-improved user experience for staff and clients.
Enhanced security
From user error to malicious personal attacks, the threats facing Karinya House were no longer a critical danger to the organisation. Azure AD Identity Protection helped make user access more secure.
An exceptional customer experience
This is what the project was ultimately all about, and feedback says it was a success.
Better technology = more opportunity
Windows Autopilot helped individualise the user experience and provided for smart configuration and faster deployment.
Increased efficiency
The new, single-window Microsoft 365 suite bundled a smart, efficient operating system with enterprise-grade security tools and integrated workplace productivity apps.