Digital Childcare offer for Wales
Service requirements
- New national digital service helping families access government-funded childcare and enabling childcare settings to claim funding for care provided.
- Consolidating seven legacy systems used across 10 local authorities into a single, centralised service.
- Simplifying administration and ensuring timely and correct payments.
Results
- 8000+ Children Benefited last year
- 3.5 million hours of funded childcare were arranged within the first 18 months
- £17.5 million paid to childcare providers in the first 18 months.
- 2500 childcare providers registered in the first 18 months
Kainos helped us achieve our vision, delivering a consistent and robust all-Wales solution. Not only is the service delivering on our requirements, but it's designed in a way that adapts to changing requirements from our stakeholders – so it can continue evolving and delivering value for years to come'
The Welsh Government’s Programme for Government promises to ‘protect, re-build and develop services for vulnerable people’. The main aim of the Childcare Offer for Wales programme is to ‘lessen the burden of childcare costs so that parents can spend money saved on the things that matter most to that family’. In Wales, eligible parents of 3 and 4 year-olds can receive the Childcare Offer of 30 hours a week of combined childcare and early education for 48 weeks a year. This entitlement has recently been expanded to some parents in education and training.
Challenge
In late 2019, Welsh Ministers decided the Childcare Offer should be administered using a national digital system owned and controlled by the Welsh Government. The goal was to link parents with providers and make it easier for them to access government-funded childcare.
The vision was to to improve the lives of everyone through collaboration, innovation and better public services, creating a digital service supported by a national telephony helpline facilitating:
- A fully bilingual service
- Integration with existing technologies in WG to create payments and to store information
- Faster payments made to childcare providers
- Enhanced transparency, security and fraud prevention.
- A consistent and accessible service, empowering parents and childcare providers through increased communication and connection
20,000 parents and 2,200 providers each year relied on the existing systems, so the new offering needed to be accessible, robust, and user-friendly.
Solution
We developed a new, cloud-based service using Microsoft Azure and the agile methodology. This allowed us to deliver in a quick and iterative manner that incorporated a range of stakeholder needs.
The Childcare Offer for Wales service removes much of the complexity and administration that had been apparent in legacy systems. It provides for a consistent national approach that is sustainable, consistent, compliant and accessible.
- Parents apply and upload documentary evidence to support their application through the service using existing technologies in the Welsh Government.
- Local Authorities review an application and manage the eligibility of a Parent wishing to access the Childcare Offer for Wales.
- Parents create an agreement online directly with their chosen provider.
- Registered childcare providers submit claims for funding through the service.
- Childcare providers are paid through the national service using existing technologies within Welsh Government.
Information integrity is maintained thanks to the rules and validation we integrated into the service. Welsh Government staff and Local Authority teams now have a central portal for accessing management reporting. And, importantly, the service is completely scalable, so it can continue to serve families, providers and local authorities as more children become eligible for funded childcare.
User Research and Design
Understanding the different existing delivery models across all 22 Local Authorities (LA) was key to developing a single service to cover the entire country. To that end, we mapped the different service delivery models across the LAs, identifying pain points and moments of delight to consider in the developing country-wide single service. We engaged with Local Authority and Welsh Government representatives while we also had visibility of existing digital solutions used across different LAs.
User engagement was particularly important as the existing service differed across the country. As part of the project, we engaged with end users conducting over 30 one-to-one interviews with parents and careers to understand their needs, current experience, and frustrations, developing specific user requirements that were incorporated into the design of the new service.
Special attention was paid to inclusive research, ensuring users with specific protected characteristics were included in defining the service. We extended our engagement to disabled parents/carers and parents/carers of children with specific education needs, thereby capturing a wealth of requirements to ensure equal access. Furthermore, all research and designs were bilingual, ensuring needs from both Welsh and English-speaking users were considered.
When designing the service, we followed a user centred and iterative approach where we produced early prototypes that were tested with users before improving the designs, increasing fidelity of our work, and retesting before committing to code. That approach allowed us to improve the experience as we developed the digital service.
Results
The new Childcare Offer for Wales digital service is making it easier for families to access funded childcare while streamlining administration and management processes for childcare providers and local authorities.
Early momentum
These figures will continue to rise as more children become eligible for the new service. Eligibility is based on school term dates, so user numbers will increase as the school year progresses.
Future-proof solution
Not only does the service scale as demand increases, but it is also based on an adaptable platform. This means future policy changes can be delivered quickly and cost-effectively, nationwide.
Thanks to our partnership, the Welsh Government team are now upskilled in agile ways of working and are actively sharing their knowledge to benefit other initiatives.
Why Kainos
Our transformative solutions encompass a range of services from cloud to artificial intelligence and intelligent automation, which add value to the public sector. We have been a key partner of the UK Government since 2011, where we’re trusted to deliver robust, secure, and scalable solutions which to date have helped over 55 million citizens and saved the public sector millions of pounds.
This expertise made us an ideal partner for developing the Welsh Government’s digital childcare offer in a way that met a range of requirements and delivered long-term value.
Childcare Offer for Wales