Policy Buddy
Policy Buddy gives social care and local authority staff instant, accurate, cited answers to policy and statutory-guidance questions — drawn from your own documents — so practitioners can confirm the right answer and act with confidence.
The problem – what it’s costing you
Frontline practice depends on getting the policy answer right, fast. A social worker confirming a statutory requirement before a home visit. A practitioner checking which threshold applies, or what the procedure says about consent or information sharing. The right answer exists — but it’s spread across local procedures, the staff handbook and dense statutory guidance, and under pressure it’s hard to find quickly.
Get it wrong, or inconsistent between practitioners, and the consequences in children’s social care are serious — for the family, the practitioner and the authority. Get it slow, and time that should go to the child goes to searching the intranet instead.
Policy Buddy removes that friction. Ask in plain English; get an accurate answer cited to your own policy and the relevant guidance, instantly — so every practitioner can act with the confidence of your most experienced one.
What it does
Policy Buddy is trained on your authority’s own documents — local policies and procedures, the staff handbook, and the statutory guidance your practitioners must follow. It answers a question the way a colleague would, and shows exactly which document and section the answer came from.
It gives the policy answer; the practitioner applies professional judgement. It does not make decisions about children or families — it makes sure the person who does has the right information, instantly and consistently.
One Assistant on KnowledgeFlow
Policy Buddy is one of the specialist assistants available through KnowledgeFlow™, Leading AI’s secure platform. Start here, and add others when you’re ready — HR Assistant for people-management questions, Write My Reply for parental and public correspondence, BidWriter for funding applications — all in the same secure environment.
The assistant you start with runs on the same platform that will run the next ten.
Security & Compliance
All data stays within your organisation’s own secure cloud environment (Azure or AWS). Your policies and information are never shared with public AI models and never used to train external systems.
Leading AI is ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certified. Every answer is cited to its source, giving practitioners a verifiable basis for the information they rely on — and your authority a clear audit trail.
Proof
The first three months of Policy Buddy in North Yorkshire Council, in numbers:
- 849 users
- 2,174 prompts
- 2,421 hours saved
Policy Buddy isn’t about automating social work decisions; it’s about removing barriers to information so that professionals can apply their expertise more effectively, create the space to make reflective practice a reality and spend more time on relationship-based practice with children and families.
“Policy Buddy has transformed how our frontline social workers access and navigate complex policy. By putting clear, reliable information at their fingertips in seconds, it has removed hours of searching and uncertainty, giving practitioners more time to focus an what matters most; supporting people. It’s not just a time-saving tool; it’s a confidence boost that helps staff make better, faster decisions every day. ”
– Cath Ritchie, Transformation and Innovation Manager, North Yorkshire Council
FAQs
It’s a strong fit there, but it works for adult social care and wider local-authority policy too — anywhere staff need fast, consistent, cited answers from policy and guidance.
No. It provides the policy and guidance answer, cited; the practitioner always applies professional judgement and makes the decision.
Yes. Load the statutory guidance your practitioners follow alongside your local procedures, and it answers against both, citing each.
You simply update the source documents and the assistant answers from the new versiYou update the source documents and Policy Buddy answers from the current version — no retraining delay, no separate content to maintain.
Book a demo
See it answer your practitioners’ questions, using your own policies and guidance.
Book a demo — a straight conversation about whether this fits your teams. No pushy sales.
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