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Action for Children
Service Design, Digital & Innovation
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Designing a new format for parenting advice through insights, trial and error
Designing a new format for parenting advice through insights, trial...
Parent Talk’s advice content is written by our experienced parenting coaches. Our content designers oversee our content process, ensuring…
Nikki Jones
May 21
John Lewis service design project: An update on the first 4 months
John Lewis service design project: An update on the first 4 months
The John Lewis funded work started in January 2023 and is a 12 month Service Design project to explore and better understand the complex…
Ben Langston
May 16, 2023
Developing Click Confidence for foster carers: lessons learned
Developing Click Confidence for foster carers: lessons learned
Action for Children was funded by Nominet — and supported by Parent Zone — to run a service design project over 18 months, looking at…
Sophie Drouet
Apr 13, 2023
The freedom of an open brief: why speaking to your users is never a waste of time
The freedom of an open brief: why speaking to your users is never a...
When I started my user research role for Parent Talk in 2021, I wanted to get a better understanding of the problems parents and carers…
Aneta Perehinets
Mar 29, 2023
The Landscape of Digital Family Support
The Landscape of Digital Family Support
I joined Action for Children’s Service Design team for 6 months on secondment from the Civil Service Fast Stream. I was given the brief to…
Jess Downes
Mar 21, 2023
Insights into Digital Peer Support for Parents
Insights into Digital Peer Support for Parents
I joined Action for Children’s Service Design team for 6 months on secondment from the Civil Service Fast Stream. During this time, I…
Jess Downes
Mar 21, 2023
Insights into Digital Family Support
Insights into Digital Family Support
I joined Action for Children’s Service Design team for 6 months on secondment from the Civil Service Fast Stream. I was given the brief to…
Jess Downes
Mar 21, 2023
What we learned from piloting an SMS helpline for young carers
What we learned from piloting an SMS helpline for young carers
Over the past few months, the Service Design team at Action for Children has been piloting Sidekick, a confidential text messaging (SMS)…
Sophie Drouet
Sep 9, 2022
Developing a content design process with subject matter experts
Developing a content design process with subject matter experts
How do you collaborate with subject matter experts to co-produce online advice?
Ruth Stokes
Jun 30, 2022
How can we make sure we’re not excluding people from our content and services?
How can we make sure we’re not excluding people from our content an...
At Parent Talk, we offer advice and guidance to parents and carers all over the UK. Our users come from lots of different backgrounds and…
Ruth Stokes
Mar 10, 2022
Big Welcome: Helping young people moving into foster care
Big Welcome: Helping young people moving into foster care
The Service Design team at Action for Children builds digital products and services to support families, children and young people. In this…
Sophie Drouet
Mar 2, 2022
The impact of the pandemic on school anxiety and why Parent Talk needs funding to support children…
The impact of the pandemic on school anxiety and why Parent Talk ne...
Parent Talk is a digital service to support parents, which rapidly scaled up in response to the pandemic. We’ve seen queries from parents…
Ellen Smyth
Feb 22, 2022
Your digital comms skills are more relevant to service design than you think
Your digital comms skills are more relevant to service design than ...
Before I moved to Action for Children’s Digital Services team, I had spent nearly 10 years working in digital communications. I was ready…
Sophie Drouet
Oct 4, 2021
Desk research: Finding data in unusual* places
Desk research: Finding data in unusual* places
*or places I didn’t know about
Sophie Drouet
May 27, 2021
How to make digital work for your charity’s emergency appeal
How to make digital work for your charity’s emergency appeal
Find out how you can use digital to run a successful charity emergency appeal
Samantha Doe
Mar 5, 2021
How reactive funding helped Parent Talk to scale and meet the increasing needs of parents
How reactive funding helped Parent Talk to scale and meet the incre...
When Advent International mobilised their resources to support those in need during the Covid-19 crisis, the partnership with Action for…
Rachael Gilthorpe
Feb 3, 2021
Redesigning a charity website: 4 ways we’ve made Action for Children’s website more user-centric
Redesigning a charity website: 4 ways we’ve made Action for Childre...
At Action for Children, we protect and support children, young people and families around the UK. We make sure their voices are heard, and…
Ruth Stokes
Feb 2, 2021
Parent Talk three years on: As many users in one day as the first five months
Parent Talk three years on: As many users in one day as the first f...
How many times have you heard ‘start small, iterate, scale’?
Rachael Gilthorpe
Nov 5, 2020
Building a brilliant team in three easy* steps
Building a brilliant team in three easy* steps
*disclaimer: not that easy, takes quite a while
Lynn Roberts
Oct 26, 2020
Parent Talk: supporting parents when they need and want it most
Parent Talk: supporting parents when they need and want it most
Parent Talk has supported over 400,000 parents since it’s pilot in 2018 and we’re here to give you a peek behind the scenes.
Rachael Gilthorpe
Sep 30, 2020
How a content strategy is kick-starting change at Action for Children
How a content strategy is kick-starting change at Action for Children
Near the end of 2019, we launched a content strategy project at Action for Children. We’re creating a roadmap for increasing our impact.
Ruth Stokes
Sep 30, 2020
Pivoting our flagship corporate fundraising event (in 3 months)
Pivoting our flagship corporate fundraising event (in 3 months)
Byte Night has been a major fundraising event for Action For Children’s for over 20 years, raising £12.5 million to help prevent youth…
Laura Botsford
Sep 11, 2020
Marketing Parent Talk: getting families free support to help them through the pandemic
Marketing Parent Talk: getting families free support to help them t...
What I learnt developing a campaign in eight weeks during the coronavirus crisis
Samantha Doe
Sep 4, 2020
Growing Organically: How we’re increasing Action for Children’s social media footprint
Growing Organically: How we’re increasing Action for Children’s soc...
This year, we’ve been hard at work developing Action for Children’s first-ever organic social media strategy, which is designed to set out…
Nick Lewis
Sep 4, 2020
Parent Talk: a rapid response to the needs of parents [in a pandemic]
Parent Talk: a rapid response to the needs of parents [in a pandemic]
Three years ago, Action for Children started designing digital services for parents and families. Several of these services were being…
Kate Stulberg
Jul 16, 2020
What I learned from my first user research role.
What I learned from my first user research role.
As part of my work on the Civil Service Fast Stream, in November 2019 I joined Action for Children on secondment. My role was as a User…
Ros-Mari Vlad
Apr 6, 2020
How can we support families during the COVID-19 lockdown?
How can we support families during the COVID-19 lockdown?
Like all charities, Action for Children’s work has been hugely affected by the coronavirus crisis. Many of our on-the-ground services…
Lynn Roberts
Apr 1, 2020
Innovation IRL: building on the Secret Santa campaign with a pop-up shop
Innovation IRL: building on the Secret Santa campaign with a pop-up...
Today is the launch of Action for Children’s Secret Santa pop up shop in Covent Garden
Lynn Roberts
Dec 5, 2019
Researching with [vulnerable] people
Researching with [vulnerable] people
During Action for Children’s summer residency with Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange, I was asked to give a talk on my experiences…
Kate Stulberg
Sep 29, 2019
What can an innovation consultancy and a children’s charity learn from each other in 5 weeks?
What can an innovation consultancy and a children’s charity learn f...
About six months ago, Action for Children’s Head of Innovation, Gita Luz, put out a simple ask on LinkedIn just to see what would happen…
Aneta Perehinets
Sep 4, 2019
How can we develop & deliver the future of social care?
How can we develop & deliver the future of social care?
We have to look for other ways to support the children that would otherwise fall through the cracks, when there‘s less money and higher…
Lynn Roberts
Jul 1, 2019
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