The Project
In early 2024, Hannah Paton-Brown joined the Impact Assessments Ltd (IA) team as a Change and Project Manager to lead the development of a bespoke digital platform. Impact Assessments operates residential care settings across the UK for disabled young adults who have become parents, offering a safe, supportive, and regulated environment where residents can learn essential parenting skills. These settings are Ofsted-regulated, and the assessments conducted within them often play a pivotal role in legal custody decisions.
The goal of the project was to digitise the assessment process through a custom-built app. This app would streamline data collection, improve reporting accuracy, and reduce the administrative burden for staff. Importantly, Impact Assessments also aimed to commercialise the app by offering it to other residential family centres with similar service models.
Our team was brought in to support the full lifecycle of the app’s development; from discovery and user research to testing, iteration, and launch. We also led a comprehensive website refresh to align with the app’s capabilities and support its promotion to external stakeholders.
The Challenges
The project faced several key challenges:
- Low Technical Literacy: Many of the end users, who were social care professionals, had limited experience with digital tools, making usability a top priority.
- Budget Constraints: IA had to operate within tight financial limits, requiring a solution that was both cost-effective and high impact.
- Legacy System Migration: Transitioning from an outdated system posed technical hurdles, particularly around data migration and user access.
- Brand Control: IA needed to ensure that reports generated through the app retained their branding and could not be altered by third-party users.
- Demonstrating Value: Convincing stakeholders of the app’s long-term benefits required extensive discovery work and clear communication of its time-saving potential.
The Solutions
To overcome these challenges, we implemented a range of strategic and technical solutions:
- Tailored Training & Support: We delivered targeted training sessions, including one-on-one engagements to build user confidence and ensure smooth adoption.
- User-Centric Design: The app was designed with simplicity in mind, featuring an intuitive interface and clear workflows that aligned with the daily routines of care staff and assessors.
- Robust Testing: We conducted three rounds of User Acceptance Testing (UAT), focussing on login processes, reporting formatting and system stability to ensure a seamless user experience.
- Multi-Channel Access: The app was made accessible via both mobile and desktop platform, allowing flexibility for users in different settings.
- Collaborative Development: We worked closely with IA’s internal Project Manager, who played a key role in gathering data, validating requirements, and facilitating user feedback.
- Brand Protection Features: We implemented watermarking and branding controls to ensure that all reports clearly indicated they were produced using the IA platform, preserving the organisation’s credibility.
Update Post Go-Live
The app officially launched in mid 2024 and has since been fully adopted across all IA care settings. Staff have reported increased efficiency, reduced paperwork, and improved consistency in assessments. The platform has also opened new opportunities for IA, as they are now actively marketing and selling the app to other residential family centres across the UK.
The success of this project has positioned IA as a digital leader in the social care sector. By combining deep sector expertise with thoughtful technology design, the organisation has not only improved its internal operations but also created a scalable solution that can benefit the wider care community.
