LOCAL OFFER – WEBPAGE

Feedback from young people March 2017

This is an extract from a report drawn up from information collated over two of the SENDIASS Young people’s group sessions run by Young Devon on Tuesday the 31st of Jan and Tuesday the 28th of Feb, which covered both consultation in relation to the Local Offer website and other consultation in relation to SENDIASS resources (which has not been included within this extract). The information was collected using a number of different activities with the Young Devon workers, as much as possible the words of the young people have been used especially in regards to the conclusion and areas they would like to see adapted to better suit the needs of SEND young people.

The young people said these were the positive things about the webpage:

  • Colourful
  • Like the pencils
  • The logo are nice for some of the groups/schools but not all of them have a logo

But there was some more negative feedback about initial responses to the webpage, these were:

  • Adult stuff
  • Rubbish
  • Boring
  • Like a school website
  • It’s hard to find online if you don’t have help
  • Needs more pictures

During an exercise where the young people chose a particular subject or club to search for to see what results came up, these were the results of the exercise. Under each search title I have also included the comments from the young people.

Trampolining – NO RESULTS although there is a trampolining club listed on the site

Football - Info about the sport not clubs

  • Need the area to find things
  • Have to scroll down – most people won’t, why can’t you just have results come up?

Dance - No area

  • Frustrating

Young Devon - took a while to find and we know what we want to find!

  • Want to give up
  • Took a while to find – most young people would just Google, it’s a lot easier

Along with searching for these specific things we also allowed the young people time to explore the webpage in their own time and search for the things that are important to them. These are the comments we noted down during discussion after this time assessing the webpage. As much as possible we have used the young people’s own words.

Young People’s comments:

-Website confusing

-Need areas and postcodes – and if you don’t know them, what do you do? – What if you are new to the area/thinking of moving here?

-Wider area put in search = more results, egPaignton to Torbay – it doesn’t tell you to do this

-When we did the same search by two groups – different results – why?

-If you spell it wrong it doesn’t come up with stuff

-It prompts with the same spelling you’ve just used when you try again - how does that help? If you have trouble with spelling it’s no help!

-Descriptions aren’t helpful, eg doesn’t say counselling on all things when you’ve done that as a search. Eg the list of services don’t say counselling in the bit about them so you can’t be sure they are what you want

CONCLUSIONS

These are the comments the young people made in conclusion to this mini-assessment of the Local Offer webpage and some suggestions on what they would do to make it better.

  • Rubbish
  • No good for young adults
  • Have to put in exactly the right thing which is not easy if you struggle with spelling or don’t know actually what you are looking for
  • Useful info (lots on there but it’s not easy to find. This seems really silly and not helpful)
  • Need to have help in the search bar for spelling
  • Needs to have the ability to use pictures instead of words for young people who struggle with reading and writing
  • More pictures
  • Make it easier to find online
  • You might just google the information