Online Privacy

Public Facing On-line Care Directory - Statement of Requirements (DRAFT)

A public facing on-line care directory allows a central source of information on local community organisations and services to be created, stored and managed easily, whilst  allowing access and use in a variety of ways to meet the needs of various audiences, such as:

• Public, service users and carers who wish to know what services exist in Devon and how to contact them.
• Care Direct Plus, Care Direct and the MyDevon Customer Service Centre call advisors as well as the Complex Care Teams and voluntary organisations who aim to help  and advise the public, service users and carers
• Brokers and Personal Brokers, who find, arrange and set-up services
• Contracts Team and Supporting People Team who may create service contracts with suppliers
• Providers of services, who are keen to tell the community about the services they offer.
• Public Information Focus Groups

In February 2010, we reviewed our public information and advice , including our current on-line directory - Devon Community Directory - by

• conducting an internal audit of our publishing and information channels,
• a workshop with Care Direct and Care Direct Plus staff,
• and three focus groups: one for older people; one for people of working age and one for existing social care service users and carers.

The working age focus group participants were recruited by the Local Involvement Network (LINk Devon); the older people from by the Senior Council for Devon and the service users and carers from the Putting People First Service User and Carer Reference Group.

We tested our existing Devon Community Directory at these focus groups, trying out some suggested searches and asking for views on the user-friendliness of the directory.

Devon Community Directory - Focus Group Comments

The Community Directory was generally received positively by all three focus groups as a potentially very useful tool. They saw the value of being able to search for local organisations too small to have their own web sites who would therefore not be found by Google-type searches and thought there was value in having a wide range of community organisations and social care providers listed in one place.

The groups also valued the idea of people at home being able to speak to staff who would be using exactly the same information source.

All focus groups were very critical of the dated look of the current system and wondered why it was not branded as a DCC resource.

Focus group members wanted to see a ‘filter-as-you search’ option, the ability to print records and a means of emailing search results on to others. In fact, one group felt such features were essential these days.

All groups welcomed the idea of having both information about contracted services and wider community information on the same search facility, and the notion of eventually having prices and availability of services as part of the system. Some group members went as far as calling for user reviews and star-ratings of services.

The importance of having information gathered locally was emphasised by everyone, which was seen as the real strength of the system, that is enabling people to search for information they simply would not find on Google or other national searches.

It was felt that the Directory was important enough to be sited on the DCC home page.

A full statement of requirements (792KB - pdf help) has been drafted and stored on this page. The draft has tried to capture the views raised at the focus groups. Once finalised, this document will be used to help identify a suitable supplier to develop a new public facing on-line care directory.

If you wish to comment on the draft requirements, please contact:-
Steve Edwards, Public Information & Communication  Managers - by 19.04.10.
Tel. 01392 383035,
email: locinfos@devon.gov.uk,
Address: Public Information & Communication, 1st Floor, The Annexe, County Hall, Exeter, EX2 4QR