The Mandatory Reporter Community is a responsive web experience supporting Mandatory Reporters in NSW.

What is the MRG?

They can access the Mandatory Reporter Guide (MRG) if they have concerns regarding the welfare of children and young people, access supporting resources, and receive real time feedback on previous reports made to the Child Protection Helpline.

Who are mandatory reporters?

Mandatory Reporters are people who work with, or encounter children in their work day e.g teachers, counsellors, doctors, child care workers, refuge workers. They are required by law to report suspected child abuse and neglect in NSW to Family and Community Services (FACS)

How does it work?

This is a Structured Decision Making tool for Reporters to determine whether a report to the Child Protection Helpline is needed for their concerns about a child. Where the concern doesn't meet threshold and FACS response is not required, the MRG will identify alternate pathways.

My Role and Responsibilities

UX Designer for Reporting Community and Early Intervention, Intake and Helpline sections of Casework Community.

Created wireframes and prototypes to convey ideas ensuring design principles, practice changes and improvements from the perspective of the broad user group were incorporated

Created User Journeys, Service Blueprints, Prototypes. Iterative prototyping and user testing provided insight for Design Specifications and User Stories

Managed the design and development of the initial pre-account community websites for YOU, Caring and Reporter, on time and within budget in Q4 2016

Liaised with vendor partners Salesforce, Squiz and Tigerspike, FACS policy stakeholders and tester for the Reporter Community

Worked collaboratively with cross-functional teams of BA’s, solution architects, change managers and separate development teams for each community

Testing, feedback and iteration of ChildStory community accounts for Reporting

The Phased Approach

Leveraging Insights
With the aid of initial workshops and interviews from the Requirements Phase from ChildStory Casework.
Workshops with Stakeholders
Worked in teams consisting of designers, business analysts and SMEs, to conduct Reporting Community focused Interviews and Workshops which helped us understand the unique concerns of each reporter group.
Conversations with Helpline Teams
Listened to inbound calls at Helpline and Child Wellbeing Units to understand the needs and concerns of Mandatory Reporters. The insights from our discovery would inform the Resources, Knowledge Articles and support services suggested to Mandatory Reporters.
Define the future state
Creating the Service Blueprints, IA, sketches and wireframes helped convey the future state to focus group Mandatory Reporters. Designs were iterated and refined following feedback.

We spoke to a lot of users

Here are some of the insights from the workshops and interviews

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Adam Pearce

Police Officer

I would like to know the outcome of what I have reported instantly with list of actions.

Samira Robson

Health Manager

It would be good to have resources to help me with the questions that I am unsure of.

I would also like to see the progress as I enter information into the report.

Jeremy Hillier

School Principal

I want to be able to save a report for later completion. Also, if further investigation is needed can i be contacted at my convenience?

Kelly Jennings

Day Care worker

I am not sure, which category of concern is more relevant. Can't I choose more than a single concern or just make a report?

Education Reporters see a child or young person nearly everyday, they personally feel burdened as they see the impact to the child.
Unstructured text boxes e-reports can mean an increase in effort at Helpline for Caseworkers to decipher the meaning and intent of reports.
Improving the quality of information captured in reports to Helpline assist caseworkers further down the process at Triage and Assessment.
Improving the quality of information captured in reports to Helpline assist caseworkers further down the process at Triage and Assessment.
Reporters often run the tool numerous times, changing the input until they receive an outcome of 'Report to FACS', with the belief numerous e-reports will lead to a FACS intervention.

Mandatory Reporters are required to enter their details with every e-report. Frustrating for those who are frequent reporters. Some reporters are submitting near blank reports.
Mandatory reporters are not always receiving the physical feedback letter to inform them of the Helpline outcome. If it does arrive it can be many weeks after the e-report.
Mandatory reporters often miss the knowledge articles located to the right of the MRG decision options, due the design of the page. Infrequent Reporters find the page confusing and tend to prefer to call Helpline.
Mandatory Reporters that are not part of Police, Health or Education don’t have access to - or even know about the MRG and other services, that may be available to them when trying to manage their concern.

Hypothesis

Empower Reporters by providing contextual guidance throughout the reporting process to improve the quality of information captured in an
e-Report.

This would streamline the intake process, reducing the amount of time caseworkers spent on call backs to Reporters, seeking more information before a report can be screened, allowing Helpline caseworkers to focus their efforts on high risk reports.

Design Goals tailored to Mandatory Reporters Needs

Simplified Reporting

Run the MRG, view guidance and explanations on the most suitable decision tree to select as well as view the outcome of the MRG

Manage all Reports

Self register for a
ChildStory account to receive real time outcomes of reports submitted to helpline

Easy access to Resources

View their report history as well as access resources to inform and empower reporters to support children and young people.

Service Blueprint created by our Design Team

Building it one by one

A prioritized list of Features

Simplified Decision Tree for Reporting

We redefined the questions being asked for each of the concerns associated with the child. This avoids reporters getting confused midway.

Availability of helpful resources throughout

Resources which help in answering questions, viewing explainer videos to select the concern, contextual info boxes are few examples.

Organizing the information which is collected

We provided ways for the reporters to include mandatory information to help the caseworkers and also additional features that help the case.

Optimised for speed

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Performance benchmarked

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Best in class

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Easy to customize

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Everything in the box

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Built for teamwork

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Guiding the reporters through helpful and contextual information
Earlier - 6/10 reporters usually started with a wrong selection of concern when reporting. This increased the time taken to complete the task by a significant amount.
1
We added helpful information and explainer videos which tell the reporters what they should be selecting.
2
Subtext for each of these concerns to help the reporters easily identify their primary concern.

Proving a concise and clear summary of reporting with necessary actions
Reporters often got confused with the final decision of the guide not knowing how to report which ended up in increase of helpline calls.
1
Final Decision of the MRG guide which tells what to do next
2
At this point, the users can also create a pdf of the decision for later purposes.
3
Summary of the answers submitted to the MRG guide.
4
Clear set of actions for the reporter - Either to call the help desk or an eReport.

The Reporting Workflow

Scroll through the different steps of how we simplified the reporting entry process

Tracking the status of your report and always staying informed
Once a report is submitted, the users had no way of tracking the status of the case and being informed about what happened to the child, or if the case has been assigned.
1
After a report is submitted, reporters can download the complete summary of what has been reported.
2
We also included a progress tracker which can be used to stay updated and also get timely notifications delivered to their email and phone when the status changes.

Watch the complete
Reporting Flow Video

A need for a centralized portal used by the frequent reporters

1
A global repository of reports
All of the frequent reporters, wanted a way and a repository where they can go view their past reports (history), ongoing reports and view their current status to stay updated.
2
Ability to update Reports
In many cases, reporters acquire more detailed information over a period of time and not exactly at the time of making a report. So, there was a great desire to give additional capabilities where they can edit the report, add more information to the report which helps with the case.
3
Alerts about missing information
According to 2014 reporting history, 73% of the reports had some kind of missing information such as child details/ suspect details/ supporting images which are vital in investigation of the case. The reporters need to be alerted and the necessary information needs to be gathered before the report expires.

4
Submit the incomplete drafts
Also, one of the features which kept coming in discussions with the reporters was the ability to resume the draft reports which were paused earlier due to any specific reason.
5
Ways to communicate with Caseworkers
In many of the cases, the investigating caseworkers might have to connect with the original reporter regarding contact information or finding out more details on the case which might not be on the report. The emails are not an effective way and there was a greater need for a messaging system.
6
Connecting with other reporters and updating profile preferences
Whenever there are doubts about cases or reports reporters tend to call the helpline but they also sometimes contact familiar reporters who they have met during conventions. A place where reporters can connect to discuss the cases is highly useful.

Reporter's Dashboard

Most important and contextual information easily accessible for further actions

Reports Database

Draft Reports which are expiring and needs action to be taken

Completed reports with multi level filtering to always stay updated

Messages

Communicating with other reporters, caseworkers and investigators made easy

Guides and Resources

Tutorial videos, documents to help reporters understand the complex processes

Outline graphic depicting hand nurturing a heart

How users reacted to the new interface?

79

Remote Usability
Test Participants

11

Moderated
Prototype Tests

128

Surveys and
Questionnaires

Data consumption became easier

Users liked the way in which the information is presented to them only when needed. A lot of users mentioned that the information provided was contextual, and also the right amount which helped reduce the cognitive load.

Help text and Explainer videos were greatly appreciated by first-time users as they were confused about where to start.

As the information being collected is broken down into hierarchical blocks and steps, very few users felt that there was a lot of information to file a report.

Action based dashboards and modular report cards

Users found it extremely helpful to see all the actions needed to be taken on the reports which are returned for various reasons instead of contacting the support team.

Report numbers helped them be ahead and proactive before the reports expire.

91% of the users said that the reports database is clean and minimal, which made it easier to find the report they are looking for. The filters helped them distill the huge database quickly.

Users wanted widgets to easily access the most frequent actions on the dashboard. they also wanted to see if some of the widgets are customizable based on their need.

A Reporting Portal for Family and Community Services of New South Wales