The Map answers questions a table cannot: which neighbourhoods are we actually reaching, where is a new group worth running, and are we working with the more deprived parts of our patch or only the easy-to-reach ones. It plots the clients on your caseload by postcode and can shade them by deprivation.
It is also the screen most likely to be misread, because a client missing from the map is not a client missing from the service. Read the two honesty lines under the map before drawing any conclusion from it.
Open the map
Select Dashboard in the Case Management sidebar.
Select the Map tab.
The card is titled Client locations.
What a pin is
A pin is one postcode, not one client. Everyone on your caseload who shares that postcode sits behind a single pin: the number on it is how many clients there are, and the coloured ring shows the mix of case statuses among them.
Select a pin to open its details:
the postcode and the number of clients, written
SW1A 1AA · 4 clients;a breakdown by case status;
each client's name, linked to their profile — capped at 100 names, with …and N more if there are more than that. The counts always include everyone, even when the list is trimmed;
the deprivation decile for that postcode, when it is known.
Pins are placed at the centre of the postcode, never at the address. That is deliberate: it is precise enough to see a pattern and not precise enough to identify someone's front door.
The two switches
Both start off.
Client density heat — a heat layer showing where your mapped clients cluster. The app describes it exactly: Heat layer: density of this org's mapped clients, computed from the postcode-centre pin counts shown on the map (no street-level precision).
Deprivation shading (IMD 2019) — a coloured halo under each pin for the deprivation decile of that postcode's neighbourhood.
Under the map, the Case status: legend lists only the statuses actually present, each with its count.
Reading the deprivation view
The scale runs from Most deprived to Least deprived across ten swatches, Decile 1 to Decile 10 — decile 1 is the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in England. The source is stated on screen:
Source: English Indices of Deprivation 2019 (IoD2019), MHCLG — IMD decile of each postcode's LSOA (1 = most deprived 10% nationally).
Two things this does not mean:
It describes the neighbourhood, not the person. Deprivation is measured for a small area (an LSOA) of roughly 1,500 people. A wealthy household in a deprived area is shaded exactly the same as its neighbours, and the other way round. Never treat the colour as a fact about a client.
It is not complete. The app tells you how complete it is: Decile known for N of N mapped clients; the rest have no shading (postcode not yet in the deprivation lookup, or outside England). Postcodes outside England have no IMD 2019 decile at all, and none is guessed.
What a missing pin means
The count under the map is the number that matters: N of N clients shown across N postcode(s). When some are missing, the app says why in the same line:
no usable postcode — nothing recorded on the profile, or what is there is not a postcode. Fix it on the client's profile and they appear next time.
whose postcode could not be located — the postcode looks right but the national lookup does not recognise it. A terminated postcode from an old address does this. It is rechecked automatically after a week.
You may also see Locating postcodes… N client(s) still being placed (this fills a one-time cache and finishes automatically). That is the first look-up of a postcode being cached; the map fills in by itself within seconds.
If the lookup service itself is down, the map says so plainly: The postcode lookup service (postcodes.io) is unreachable right now, so clients cannot be placed on the map. Try again shortly. Nobody has been removed from your caseload — nothing can be placed until the service answers.
A missing pin is therefore always a data or lookup gap, never a client who has left.
Which filters apply
This trips people up: the dashboard's date window does not apply to the map. The map always shows where your current caseload lives, not who was active in the chosen period. The other dashboard filters — staff, service, status, demographics — do narrow it. The app repeats this on the card: Dashboard filters (staff, service) apply; the date window does not — all non-discarded clients with a geocoded postcode are shown.
Privacy
The map respects hidden clients exactly as the rest of the app does: if you are not allowed to see a client, they are not on your map. Where a client's only case is hidden from you, their status shows as unknown rather than leaking the real one into a pin's colours. The deprivation data is public geography and holds nothing about any individual.
What the map cannot show
Street-level or address-level location.
Movement over time, or where someone lived when they were referred.
Deprivation for postcodes outside England.
Clients with no postcode on file — however many services they have received.