Problem
Families engaged with the child welfare system often don't feel their needs are being taken into account when being referred to support services.
Approach
As part of the design project with the NYC Administration for Children's Services, I used my background in product design to create interactive prototypes that reframed a hostile experience to a collaborative one.
Outcome
Our partners at the child welfare agency used these prototypes to advocate for new funding, projects and technologies that would make this vision a reality. A selection of the tools, such as the airtable provider directory, were implemented into the agency's workflow.
Family Centered Website
Currently, families receive little information about services they can be referred to when interacting with the Administration for Children's Services. Based on lessons from research and co-creation with families and staff, I developed a set of talking points and key needs families had when being referred to services.
Families shared their needs for better information around:
What does working with a support worker mean for my family?
Straight talk about the process of being referred to services.
Empowering families to share what types of services they're interested in.
And the ultimate vision: Supporting families in choosing their own support worker.
Provider Directory
Improving family experiences won't happen unless staff have the tools to communicate about support services and locations. During this project, the child welfare agency kept their listing of providers in an excel file that lived on one staff member's computer.
Working with families, child welfare workers and support providers, we discovered the value of building plain-language content about support locations. We tested prototypes like the ones shown below to make sure the information would be useful both to families and agency staff.
Building the directory
Due to the agency's circumstances and the lengthy process to procure new software, I wondered, "how might the agency better track and share provider information without buying or building new software?" To explore this, I created an airtable prototype that gave structure and easier access to provider information.
Adoption
With the foundation of our extensive research and co-created prototypes, our agency partners took the airtable prototype and implemented it across the agency. It is now being used by staff across all five boroughs to find service providers that support families.