Background
I was initially approached in late 2024 by Tamsin Dower, Regulatory, Compliance and Communications Manager in the Together for Families directorate of Cornwall Council. She remembered me from when I worked there, ten years prior, and wanted my support for a major revamp of the Council’s Adult Social Care pages. There was some to-ing and fro-ing, as once I’d confirmed my availability, interest, and pricing, there were still some hoops to jump through on the Council’s side. However, once the magic words CQC were uttered (Care Quality Commission – OFSTED for social care providers), the hoops all evaporated, and I was brought in to start work the following week.
The Adult Social Care website had grown somewhat organically (messily) and was not easy to navigate for anyone needing adult social care services. In addition, many of the teams felt that their web areas could do with sprucing up, to add more information for their users.
CQC inspectors were scheduled to visit in mid June 2025, and I started work in early February. We knew the deadline was going to be tight, but we wanted to get as much updated content on the site as possible before the inspection.
Process
This was a project of significant size, so after our initial set-up meetings, and establishing shared folders, and logins, we arranged for weekly update meetings, and a spreadsheet to keep track of progress. I had a key link person at the council who was responsible for booking my calendar appointments with the subject matter experts, and later on for uploading the content into the back end of the Council’s website.
In broad terms, I met the expert(s) and picked their brains, determining whether the existing content was in need of a polish, or a complete overhaul. In a number of cases, pages needed to be written from scratch, where they didn’t exist before. We took inspiration from other councils’ sites, leaflets, and presentations for the public, to show as clearly as possible the information we wanted to get across.
Once I’d gathered my information, in each instance, I drafted the pages, and shared them with the local experts, who were able to edit the document, make comments, and ask questions. After some back and forth, each page was approved by the experts, and collated for sign-off by the relevant manager.
After a number of sections had been completed, and I had a good idea of the breadth of what was required, I met with Tamsin and her team in-person at a café, where we ate cake and discussed the overall structure of the site. We planned out the landing page for the Adult Social Care directorate, and the changes we needed to make to the higher-level Health and Social Care landing page (which covers Children’s social care as well). We also determined how to arrange other areas of the directorate, and therefore which other pages needed creating.
The Council’s website has a limited number of templates, and permitted layouts, and we also had to work with the Hemingway app to ensure that the language used met the readability requirements for the site.
Result
After racing to get as many pages as possible complete before the CQC inspectors came, we ran into a few technical and operational difficulties, and the main landing pages weren’t able to be published in time. However, Tamsin and her manager are delighted with the work that I’ve done and have asked me to start work on the Together for Families directorate pages, which encompasses children’s social work, education, schools and early years.
- Extensive web content edited, created, researched and checked
- Local government in the social care sector
- Significant investment from the Council
- Duration 6 months +
- Cornwall Council Adult Social Care https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/adult-social-care/