25 July 2024
How applying a content design approach reduced the number of incorrectly received adult safeguarding referrals, making sure people got the help they needed and reducing demand on a busy team.
As part of the website upgrade project we recently worked with our adult social care teams. We're improving the content on the most popular sections of plymouth.gov.uk, making the site easy to navigate and accessible, and our information clear and easy to understand.
Our first step in the process is to meet with the service areas who are responsible for the content, we explain what content design is and why accessibility and designing for users' needs is important.
Through this conversation we discovered an existing piece of work was already in progress. A request had been made to our Digital team to redesign the adult safeguarding referrals form.
The problem
Adult safeguarding supports adults who have care and support needs, are at risk of abuse and are unable to protect themselves. In 2023 the team received 6,500 referrals, up from 3,500 in 2020.
An increasing number of referrals didn't meet the criteria for a safeguarding referral. This meant the service were dealing with referrals that weren't for them, leaving less time to focus on the true safeguarding referrals.
Users of the service are mostly professionals, although members of the public can also make referrals.
The request to rebuild the referral form mainly focused on including text on the website and at the start of the form to provide signposting options. These were based on the categories the team received the most incorrect referrals for.
Our content designers immediately identified some problems with this approach:
- people don’t read online - especially if they're trying to get something done
- those completing the referral will have different levels of knowledge, the process needed to work for everyone
- we're expecting users to do the hard work, instead of making it easy for them
The service were under a lot of pressure and needed to make the changes quickly, but they were willing to let us take a look and make suggestions.
The solution
We thought a decision tree might help , this presents complex information as a flow of questions. We took the list of signposting options and turned them into a series of questions. Depending on their answers, users were led to the option most relevant to them. The aim was for only true safeguarding referrals to get to the form.
We had to work quickly to implement this solution. The team initially visualised the flow of questions, and we then worked with the service to refine and improve. In just a few days we had designed and built the decision tree part of the process.
The new form and decision tree went live at the beginning of March 2024. We've looked at the data and compared to the year before, referrals have decreased by 25%.
The service has noticed that there has been a reduction in numbers and that the people using the form are coming through with much more reasonable referrals.
“the stats are great! we are experiencing this in the team. Despite having someone off sick and the Easter vacation we have continued to reduce our backlog. I can actually foresee an end to backlog now!”
Service Manager
Anyone interested in helping us to improve our online services can join our Digital User Panel.