By Andy Merchant, CAN Digital Access Project Lead
A major milestone for Service Finder: Over 1,000 professionals trained and 100 organisations engaged
CAN’s award-winning Service Finder has reached a significant milestone, with more than 1,000 professionals trained from over 100 organisations and teams. This reflects a growing commitment from health, social care, housing, education, local authority, and voluntary sector partners to make it easier for people to access the support they need.
For everyone involved in developing and championing Service Finder, this represents thousands of conversations, referrals, and connections made by professionals who need quick, reliable information about local services.
What is Service Finder?
Service Finder is an online directory developed by CAN for NHS Dorset. It helps frontline workers quickly find accurate, up-to-date information about more than 2,500 local organisations, services, activities, and community venues.
Behind Service Finder is a shared dataset of community information that follows the Government-backed Open Referral standard. Open Referral is a way of organising and sharing information about services, making it easier for different organisations and digital systems to work together.
Using Open Referral brings many benefits. Information only needs to be collected once, then it can be shared across partner organisations. This reduces duplication, makes better use of resources, and helps organisations avoid investing in multiple systems that provide the same functionality.
For frontline workers, Service Finder saves valuable time by removing the need to search for information from multiple sources. It also supports initiatives such as social prescribing by helping professionals identify the most appropriate local services, activities, and support available to help people stay safe, healthy, and connected to their communities.
Service Finder allows users to:
- Search for services by topic, location, time of day, and other criteria.
- Save and share service information with colleagues, patients, families, and residents.
- Find the right support quickly and confidently.
Whether supporting a young person with mental health needs, helping someone access housing support, or connecting a carer to local services, Service Finder helps professionals navigate Dorset’s support network more effectively.
Training and engagement have included teams from:
- NHS Dorset and Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust
- University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust
- Primary Care Networks and GP Practices across Dorset
- BCP Council and Dorset Council services
- Dorset Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, STARS, and Access Wellbeing
- Carer Support Dorset, Forward Carers, and Help & Care
- BCHA, YMCA Bournemouth, Faithworks, Shelter, and The You Trust
- Schools, academies, and youth-focused services
- Community and voluntary sector organisations across the county
This growing network demonstrates the value of having a shared source of information that can be used across organisational boundaries.
Why Service Finder matters
Every day, professionals are asked questions such as: “Where can I find support for this family?” or “Who can help with housing issues?”. Without a central source of information, finding the answers can be time-consuming and frustrating.
Service Finder reduces that challenge by bringing together frequently quality-assured local information into one place, helping professionals spend less time searching and more time supporting people.
The next chapter
Reaching 1,000 trained professionals from over 100 teams is a major achievement, but it is only the beginning. As more organisations add their services and more professionals join the growing community of users, Service Finder is becoming an increasingly important part of Dorset’s support infrastructure, helping ensure residents can be connected to the right help, at the right time, by the right organisation. Thank you to every organisation, service provider, and professional who has contributed to this success. Together, we are building stronger, more connected communities.
Interested in joining the Service Finder network? Whether you’d like to list your services or access free training to use the tool, we’d love to hear from you: servicefinder@can100.org
Receive updates about the Shared Community Services Dataset, Service Finder and future developments:
