Developing a new digital skills framework
Back in December 2021, Scouts approached us to help them develop a digital skills framework for their 500 staff to use and to share with the wider sector. Over the past year we’ve been working to co-design a comprehensive framework containing over 150 tools and resources, broken down into easily navigable sections and categories.
The framework we developed supports their staff to learn about digital and how it can help them in their roles. It covers the basics — from foundational skills and online safety, through to digital wellbeing and collaboration — and more specialist skills, such as data management, service design, accessibility and user research.
Scouts and CAST are keen for this framework and its learning resource bank to be available and used in the wider sector. So we’ve invested in two rounds of testing with organisations of different types and sizes to figure out how to do this. The first round of testing took place at the end of 2022, with Access Social Care, The Soil Association and 1625 Independent People. We’ve just started a new round of testing with The Tutor Trust, Aberdeen Foyer and Together for Short Lives.
We’ve been looking at how we can best share the framework with the wider sector so that organisations can personalise it to meet their needs, while also providing standardisation to minimise the update costs. Alongside this we’re hoping to learn what kind of support organisations might need to embed the framework and if there are other new elements that we might develop to encourage usage.
During the next round of testing we’ll be looking at fine tuning the framework as well as including more resources for digital inclusion for those organisations who support their teams and service users with this.
Future plans for the framework include working with people with lived experiences of the refugee and asylum system to understand how we can make the framework more inclusive, accessible and relevant to them.
You’ll hear more from the organisations involved in testing soon. In the meantime, if you want to be kept up to date with the developments and hear when the framework will be available to you (we expect this to be by autumn 2023), sign up here.
