BANES Parent Carer Forum

Word of mouth is the best recommendation a web designer can receive. When the coordinator of Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) Parent Carer Forum got in touch to say they’d seen the Parent Carer Forum website design I’d created for Parent Carer Forum Devon and wanted something similar for their own organisation, I was delighted to come on board and work with them.

What is a Parent Carer Forum and why does their website matter?

A Parent Carer Forum is an independent local group of parent carers of children and young people (aged 0–25) with additional needs or disabilities. They work with local authorities, education, health, and other services to help ensure support meets the needs of children and families. There are over 150 of these groups around the UK.

The primary audience of the website is parents and carers of children with SEND who are looking for clear guidance and support. They may be feeling overwhelmed, under pressure and have lots of questions. They may be looking for ways to meet up with other parents, find out more about what services are available to them and perhaps crucially looking for a way to be heard about their concerns and needs so that SEND services can improve.

A Parent Carer Forum website is often the first point of contact for a family who needs support and quickly and so the site needs to be intuitive, accessible and full of helpful content.

Starting with what already existed

BANES PCF already had a website but it wasn’t really working for them. The website was built with WordPress but the design wasn’t reflecting the services they provide; content was limited, the design was clunky.

BANES PCF had already recognised the need to change and refreshed their logo and colour scheme. They were able to give me a full branding kit, including logo, colour codes and fonts, to work from. This gave me a solid foundation and meant the design direction was clear from the beginning.

I always ask my clients to audit their current site before a project begins. That means asking the client to go through and evaluate the current content, deciding what is staying, what is going and what needs to be changed or added. It is important that a plan for the site structure is in place before beginning the design.

Designing with colour and accessibility

The colour palette was chosen by the client because of the calmness it portrays, an important consideration when the target audience is likely to be stressed and under pressure. The client was also keen to avoid white or very pale backgrounds to the pages. I’ll be honest, this is not my usual style and it did challenge me to adapt to the client’s vision, whilst also meeting accessibility standards with regards to colour contrast etc.

Accessibility was a crucial factor throughout the project, not just in terms of colour contrast, but typography and navigation as well. I use a number of different tools to help me achieve the best accessibility standards that I can. Color Palette Fixer is my favourite colour palette tool. It helps me not only ensure that colour contrast meets the WCAG accessibility standards but also that the colours harmonise nicely with one another. I also use the Silktide Accessibility Checker and PageSpeed Insights, which checks site performance and flags technical accessibility issues, to flag up other potential issues.

The role of the photography and illustrations in conveying both diversity and the right tone really matters with a website like this. The client supplied all the imagery for this project. The line-drawn illustrations were part of their branding kit and they had access to a photo stock library.

However for sometime the home page design just wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t until we landed on the photo, currently being used in the hero section of the home page that the design suddenly fell into place. It’s amazing how just one photo can turn a design around!

Managing the project with Kitchen.co

I used the Kitchen.co client portal system again with this client, as I did in the Leap Workshops project. In fact it is now standard across all my projects to use this for managing content and discussing progress with the client. It was especially useful here given the volume of content and imagery that I had to use.

I will try and write a dedicated post about Kitchen.co in the future, but if you have any questions about it, please drop me a line.

The Events Calendar plugin

Many Parent Carer Forums run training events, workshops and meetings and a calendar is a helpful way to display what’s coming up. BANES PCF was already using The Events Calendar WordPress plugin to add and display their events, which pleased me because this has always been my go-to events plugin. Usually the free version of the plugin has all the features clients needs such as event name, date and time, description, venue details and imagery, and displays the events in an attractive format as a monthly calendar or list. The client was used to adding new events and therefore keeping it as is, meant they didn’t need to learn anything new.

The Password Protected Members Area

Like many similar organisations, BANES PCF needed to be able to share resources with its members but not the general public. WordPress makes this a relatively straightforward feature to implement as there a number of plugins that can password protect pages and content.

I installed a document library plugin for the client to be able to upload the files and resources and then as there wasn’t the need to members to have individual logins, another plugin was used to password protect the library with a single password, which will be given to members when they need it. The client can easily update this password themselves when needed.

The Finished Site

Parent Carer Forums do vital work for SEND families and they deserve a website that reflects their work. I believe that the new BANES PCF now does that with more content and better design. The client is really pleased with the result which is always a nice feeling for me too.

This is the second Parent Carer Forum website that I’ve built (the first was Parent Carer Forum Devon) and having worked closely with both sets of clients, I’ve come to understand what is needed from a Parent Carer Forum website: clear and accessible information for parents who may be feeling anxious, a professional presence that gives them credibility with their local authority and practical features such as the events calendar and member-only resources, all of which make the site practical and useful.

In reviewing other Parent Carer Forum websites, I’ve noticed that many of those websites have a DIY feel to them. PCF Coordinators are so busy that it’s hard to find the time to put into them. They become outdated and fall off the radar and pushed down the to-do list. However for many families the website is the first port of call, so it needs to be a true reflection of the help and support provided by the Parent Carer Forum.

If you are part of a Parent Carer Forum and have been thinking about the need to redesign your website, then I’d really love to hear from you. I understand your audience, what your site needs to achieve and I can bring that knowledge to your project from the start. And if budget is a factor, then a typical Parent Carer Forum website design can be undertaken as part of my Website in a Week service: a fast service, by a professional website designer for a fixed price with no surprises.