Development of Portal for Children and Families

Exploratory work is underway to develop a digital portal for children, young people and parents/carers to engage with SCRA.

This is a long-term project and will be developed over the next few years.

The focus for the first phase is to engage with staff and Hearings-experienced young people. Initial workshops have already been held with Our Hearings, Our Voice and SCRA’s Voice of Experience Reference Group.

Although the project is still in its infancy, Kelly Mills, SCRA’s Digital Programme Delivery Manager, explained:  “The project is about creating and testing a safe online space for young people and families. This digital portal would work alongside current services and help people get information, take part, and stay engaged more easily.”

At this stage, we are finding out what people want from a digital portal. Kelly said: “We want to learn from young people and families about what they need from a secure online service from SCRA. The aim is then to design and test a very early trial version of the portal.

“ We will be working hand in hand with Hearings-experienced young people to help design it. It will be genuine co-production.

“The portal will be one of our tools to engage and inform children and families, we will still have our paper notifications.  Our key aim of this initial work is to ensure the portal is safe, inclusive, easy to use, and sensitive to people’s experiences.”

At the moment, most of our communication with children and families still happens by post, however, we are moving towards using more digital documents.

Kelly explained: We need to ensure that we are digitally inclusive and provide choice and empowerment to children and families as per our trauma-informed principles.

“Digital information will support current communications including paper letters, not replace them. Plus, early engagement sessions seem to indicate children and families would engage with the portal.

“It won’t be for everyone, and children and families will be given the choice to opt in. We are also very mindful of digital exclusion. That’s why we need to continue to ensure we have multiple channels of communication and provide information in different formats. We do anticipate that over time, there will be more demand for a portal and that more people will use it.

At this stage, the portal is a blank canvas. However, based on early feedback, we anticipate children and families may want to see upcoming Hearing dates in a calendar, view a simple timeline of what’s happened so far, access age-appropriate summaries of reports​, be able to provide their views in different formats.

Kelly explained: “We will be guided by what people tell us. We will also build in accessibility and support tools to assist them.”

So what is happening next?

Kelly added: “We’re currently in the discovery phase, where we’re doing research, consultations, and technical scoping to understand what’s possible. After this, we’ll move into the Define stage. That’s where we’ll bring everything we’ve learned together, work with young people to prioritise the most important features and refine our plans so we have a clear direction for creating the first prototype.

“Once that’s in place, phase one development will begin. During this stage, we’ll design, build, and test an early trial version of the portal so we can gather feedback and make improvements.

“The overall project will take place over several years. Throughout that time, we’ll keep testing ideas and early versions of the portal with small groups of young people and families. Their feedback will help shape each step. When we’re confident it’s working well, we’ll move into small pilots to learn even more, before eventually rolling the portal out to everyone.”

Exciting times are ahead! Watch this space for more information!