Jax Wechsler

Project background and brief:

The ‘Child Story’ program is focused on designing online services to support the child protection eco-system. Tenders for these tools went out to tender in August 2015.

Within the service design work for this program a series of process flow maps were created to communicate the processes Family and Community Services take when working with families. These maps represented the FACS view of the world.

A series of co-design events took place in March 2015 where these maps were presented to the organisation. To accompany this map I worked on another map which aimed to communicate the perspective of the child within FACS processes. The child map mean that the child’s view was in the conversation and front of mind.

This child experience map was later turned into a website which communicated the child’s view  of the child protection system and how the prototypes designed in the ChildStory program will make life better for carers, workers, children and families. This piece was pivotal to assisting stakeholders and IT vendors understand the users of the tools and their life contexts.

Project activities and deliverables:

To produce these maps I held a number of workshops and interviews with Not for Profits and front-line staff who work directly with young people and families.

We considered what happens to children during the different FACS processes of Early intervention, Intake, Assessment, Intervention, Placement, Adoptions, Leaving and After care. Working with a fantastic illustrator the following maps were created and printed out and stuck on the wall at the various workshops. They were very well received by the organisation as these add a human element to the more process focused maps.

The Child Journey website was developed to communicate the needs of children/young people, carers, families and workers and different roles in the child protection system and show how the ChildStory prototypes will make things better.

This project was presented at the Designing for the Common Good conference held by UTS.