Case study
Delivering Better Outcomes for Families with Children First
Children First is a Scottish charity organisation dedicated to protecting children and young people from harm and helping families to build strong, supportive environments through various services such as counselling, advocacy, and community support programs. Children First’s ambition is for every child in Scotland to be safe, loved and well, together with their family.
The Challenge
Before engaging Kerv Digital, Children First were running their organisation on a proprietary, heavily customised end of life SQL Database. Technical restrictions and high overheads for modifying the system meant the technology had not kept pace with the charity's changing needs, and its language felt out of date, referring to families and children as transactional service users rather than individuals.
Children First needed a new approach that would:
- Support their work with children and families
- Respect the rights of those whose data they hold
- Evidence the quality and impact of their work through an intuitive, accessible system
They chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 for its extendable nature, and selected Kerv Digital after a thorough provider review, drawn to Kerv's approach of building long-term solutions in partnership with charities rather than offering a one-size-fits-all product.
The Solution
Once Kerv were engaged, the first part of the process was a thorough discovery piece to plan out what was needed and ensure collective understanding of the end result, across the development team and non-technical stakeholders including senior leaders at Children First and the families whose data would be recorded in the system.
Children First performed first-party user research to ensure children and families were involved in every stage of the thinking, design and implementation of how they record the impact of their work and the language used across the system, with numerous rounds of iteration to give the best possible experience for both colleagues and families.
Through in-depth design workshops and an agile, iterative approach to development, we collectively delivered three separate apps to capture information, produce reports and fulfil ongoing requirements across a range of services. These apps used a common set of terms and language that was simple and easy to understand, and made sure families felt like respected individuals, not a number within a database.
I would now be proud to show a family their record’ is great evidence that technology can move from a bottleneck to an enabler of change when designed and implemented correctly.
The Results
The technology has helped transform how Children First approach recording information about children and families, enabling a more outcome-focused approach in line with the individual-focused work colleagues have always delivered. The process now starts with recording what families think will make a difference for them, captures their journey as they work with the charity, and measures what difference this work has made.
By more effectively gathering the hopes, progress, stories and feedback of children and families, Children First are amplifying the voices of children and young people, so they can learn and evidence what really makes a positive difference. Having a system that 'talks their language' reinforces the importance of involving children and families in the creation of their own records, letting them review and connect with their own story as they have recorded it in partnership with the charity.
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